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    MSFT Hosed My System?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by Toys4Boys, Mar 5, 2008.

  1. Toys4Boys

    Toys4Boys Notebook Enthusiast

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    Not sure what happened but my new Z61T w/ OEM Vista Home Premium started acting oddly the other day culminating in my not having access to files then programs on my computer. I had not attempted to do a clean install yet but had downloaded some of the necessary files, including those from "My Digital Life" and ABR. I attempted System Restore a couple of times w/ no success, tried System Restore from Safe Mode w/ no success, tried Thinkpad Refresh and now things go from bad to worse. Now I get a screen telling me that the Activation Key that I entered is incorrect, I never entered one, and I can only access limited functionality, ie. go online to purchase a "valid" key. I contacted Lenovo support and they pointed me to a patch for people w/ OEM Vista having this very problem which of course didn't work. They then suggested that I do a "Factory Restore", no big deal as I was planning to do a clean install in 1 or 2 days, which also didn't work. I was able to get to a cmd prompt window from the limited access by typing "C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe" and run the ABR to retrieve my Activation Key. Now when windows told me my key was invalid I selected enter different key but this too failed. The first restore was from the partition so I tried again from my "Recovery Discs" w/ the same results. Now I also get "No Operating System Detected" and "No Hardware Detected" so Lenovo Support has me go into the BIOS and for HDD select compatiblity and run restore again and if that doesn't work run HDD Diagnostics. This all sounds like a stall but I was willing to try 1 more time. Of course I got the same results so I called Support again and insisted that the OS was hosed and that they needed to send me a OS DVD. I was told they would and that I should have it in 2 days, we'll see.

    In the meantime I lost my downloaded "install.wim", since it was on my Z61 and it appears to no longer be available as when I attempt to DL i get a 753 bytes file. Anyone have a way for me to obtain a copy of the file please let me know.

    Thanks
     
    Toys4Boys, Mar 5, 2008
    #1