Lenovo recovery disc problems

How many of you have had trouble with Lenovo recovery discs? I've had two different Lenovos and the only time I've ever been able to reload the OS is by using discs I've burned myself. That goes for XP tablet and vista. I've beem sent three different copies of my Vista discs and four sets of XP. I ended up using an OEM copy of each and my activation code on the sticker on my laptop.

I'd kill to get someone to burn a set of restore discs for an installation of Vista Business x64 for an X200 Tablet. My notebook originally came with Business x86. I had a friend use his disc set to get me to 64Bit and never got around to burning a set myself. Yesterday my hard drive failed.

 

never had any trouble with lenovo recovery discs (used t4x, t6x, t400, x6x, x200(s) before)(possibly more)

 

They always tell me to insert the start up disc. When I do it says that I have the wrong disc. It's the same with the next one.

 

well unless i'm mistaken, there's a boot disk, then the disk 1 disk 2's

(but i might be..it's been a while)

 

Your recollection is accurate.

 

Well I am having the exact opposite problem that you are. The recovery discs I made don't work and the utility keeps saying you have the wrong disc. This happened with my T61p and the recovery discs I made. Now with my X200 it won't even recognize my Ultrabase DVDRW drive so I can make a set. I just the other day ordered a set of recovery discs for my T61p and they worked perfectly letting me restore my machine.

 

I hate Vista 32bit. In my mind if I'm going to have a 32bit OS it might as well be XP.

 

I have had similar problems with recovery disks giving "wrong disk" warnings. I found that you just have to persist, and try a few times until it clears it. It scared the hell out of me, but they worked in the end. Much much better to have an image to restore to, or even have a copy of Paragon.

 

I tried to restore using the factory supplied Vista disks and the XP disk I burned when I got the machine and neither set worked. No matter what disk I put in first it always said it was the wrong one. I ended up just restoring from the hidden partition.

 

I'll try it. Can't hurt

Btw, What's Paragon?

 

Paragon is a company that makes many disk management tools such as partition editors and drive imaging software.

 

I have had it with these Thinkvantage tools in general. Al lot of them seem to function very poorly recently. I think they are very nice tools but they were not updated with the times and with a lot of features being absorbed by what Windows can do natively, I think they will eventually die out. I would suggest you buy some good quality drive imaging software and make an image. I am going to be doing this from now on. Not to mention that if you don't have a warranty the recovery discs from Lenovo will cost $50+, which is pricey. Rather to spend that on a good imaging software, which will help on all the machines you own. Just my 2 cents...

 

If I bought something from them which one would I buy? All I'm interested in is having the restore partition as if I got the machine straight from the factory.

 

Yes, sorry. They do - and their system backup software can be trialed http://www.paragon-software.com/home/systembackup/
However, I wish I had said Acronic - because that is the company I would go for. Their TrueImage Home software is brilliant. Also available on trial. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

The Lenovo restore set takes the system back to a factory machine. General imaging takes you back to a state of affairs that was specifically imaged. Programs such as Acronis can store several images, a record over time of system states to return to as you wish. But it will only take you back to the factory state (or close) if a specific image was created as soon as the system arrived and before other programs (other than Acronis!) were installed, and system personalised, etc.

 

How useful is the Recovery feature? Other than OS recovery has anyone used it for anything else?

I have a 64GB SSD which means space is a premium. Currently Lenovo recovery partitions take up 12GB. I am considering using my Technet Vista Disk to do a fresh install.

 

If you have an SSD I strongly recommend upgrading to a clean install of Win7, which has many SSD-optimized settings (admittedly, one can manually tweak Vista the same way - and even Win7 has some tweaks undone) . I upgraded from Vista with Lenovo partitions and got rid of them in install process. I have 120GB, but still like to have the space available! I use the Win7 imaging program (which is excellent) to periodically save OS and programs mirror to external HDD. I combine this with a separate data partition, periodically mirrored to external HDD using Microsoft Synctoy (brilliant!). I would hate to have to go back to a year zero OS, as Lenovo rescue does!

If you want a fully-featured imaging and backup program, I would try/buy a copy of Acronis True Image. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/.
I used the 2009 version with Vista, and was very impressed, though found it so much more than I needed it for, but that is also good.

 

I am not sure how good or bad Paragon's software is as I have never used any of their software personally, but if you wanted to try them you would need to look at software that creates drive images. Honestly I am looking into what drive imaging software to get right now. Check out this thread. There is a discussion of drive imaging software going on.