Full System Restore Not Working (Rescue & Recovery problem)

I'm trying to do a full system restore on my T61p to revert back to original factory contents.

On startup I press the 'ThinkVantage' button. Then I click 'restore your system' --> Then I select 'Restore my entire hard drive...'. Step 2 prompts me to choose the backup to restore from. The problem is, when my local hard drive is selected (or any other option in that drop down menu) no backups are displayed.

all I want to do is restore to factory contents. These computers are supposed to have a separate partition that contains necessary files, drivers, etc. to complete this task and that is what I'm trying to access. However, as I said, I can't seem to get there.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks, Zach

 

OEM's have been known to have sporradic issues with the recovery partition not being properly setup so this may be the cause of your issue.

I have never used the recovery partition of my ThinkPad T61P as I did a clean install of Windows XP/Vista to help improve performance. If you are comfortable with doing such an install there are guides located on these forums so thats just an additional thought. It requires more work but in the end you'll find your ThinkPad performing not only faster but more reliably.

As far as the recovery partition issue I'm sure someone will stop by and shed some light on your issue here soon.

 

Hi there, You need to burn your own recovery discs to restore to factory defaults from.

If you press on the start bar and search RECOVERY MEDIA you will find Create Recovery Media program. Use this to burn your recovery discs.

I had same problem, but found an answer in a differnet thread under another topic. Good luck. Just burning mine now....

 

thanks to both of you for your help.

if it comes down to it, i'll use stef's idea and i'll prob do a clean install of vista down the line as hackez suggested (i hate the long boot time and the unnecessary thinkvantage "utilities").

but barring those suggestions, does anybody know a way to do the full system restore via the partition?

 

Press the blue button upon startup at the ThinkPad Splash Screen.

 

Atkit3kt, that's what I've been doing.

When I press that blue ThinkVantage button and try to do a system restore I don't get a list of backups to restore to. As I said earlier, I'm not looking to restore to a previous point but to restore to factory contents.

 

I have the same problem bigspooon. The option "Restore factory settings" used to appear to me, but all of the sudden, it stopped appearing... Really weird.

It's probably a bug (that I don't know how to solve...)
I think that this problem may have started only after I installed the patch for Vista SP1, but I'm not sure.

 

So I went ahead and did what Stef recommended and it worked just fine. I ended up burning 3 DVDs (the 1st and 3rd weren't complete burns, but the 2nd one used up the whole disc). I loaded the 1st CD, restarted my computer, and pressed the 'ThinkVantage' button. The rest is just following on screen instructions. Took a couple hours so it seems to take no longer than factory restoring from the partition.

 

I am in the middle of doing a factory restore on my new x61s. After tweaking the system I did something to cause IE to not work at all, can't find the problem, so whats a few wasted hours?

I don't have a dvd burner for this thing, so I'm restoring from the factory partition. I went through the ThinkVantage button and clicked on full factory restore. I have not burned and recovery disks since I got the computer.

This will restore the computer to how it was when I first turned it on, right?

 

Yes, it will.

 

You can "restore" the full system restore option to Rescue and Recovery:

1 F11 off boot to get to R&R
2 Ctl-Alt/Shift and also click on RESTART
3 Should bring DOS prompt
4 go to C: drive
5 regedit
6 change Local Machine/Software/Lenovo/TVTCommon SystemType to 0

exit and you should see the full restore option under restore choice

You may need to discharge system board to get the restore to work. disconnect battery & power supply, hit power button 10 times to discharge, plug in and restore.

Worked for me.

JMN10016