Recovery CD's I am confused

Ordered a Vista Ultimate T61. I thought there were to be no recovery CDs. My box had the following inside: 1 Rescue and Recovery CD (reads WINPE EN on middle left of dsic). What is WINPE EN?

Also go a Supplemental Product Recovery CD. Supposed to work on many models.

Also got 6 CDs lableled Product Recovery CD for T61, R61 (many models). Middle left reads XPP SP2. So they are for XPP.

I want a set of recovery CDs for my Vista system. Some said can get it by calling and paying? Paying?

Based on Stallen's post about clean install I bought the MSFT Anywhere Upgrade DVD from CompuUSA (before they went out of business).

What do I need to restore to factory condition my Vista system? The easiest way is to get Vista recovery CDs right?

 

You can learn more about Windows PE through these links:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpreinst/default.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment

The Supplemental Product Recovery CD is one disc? If so, that's probably not the recovery discs. ThinkPads are sent without recovery discs because each system has a hidden partition in case you want to restore your system back to factory state. You can boot into it by pressing the blue ThinkVantage Button during startup. If you want to put the hidden partition on a set of bootable discs, you have to burn them using Rescue and Recovery.

It's all in stallen's guide:

Make Recovery Disks: Open the start menu and in the search box, type "Recovery Media" (without the quotes). Then click Recovery Media from the window. *Be warned, you can only make ONE copy of the recovery media. If you mess up, you'll have to reinstall from the partition again in order to be able to make another recovery disk.* Make sure you have 3 recordable dvd disks available (or 1 CD and 2 DVDs. The first disk can be a CD). It takes 2 to 3 blank disks total. Then just follow the instructions and you'll be all set.

 

how come i didn't get anything like that

 

and how come it took my t61 a whopping 9 cd's to make a complete recovery disk set?

I also wasted a good 4.7gb capacity DVD+RW on the very first (bootable it looks like) recovery disk... Maybe I can run the recovery program again but just to make a different copy of the first bootable?

 

From my Guide:

Create Recovery Discs*: Open the start menu and click on Search. Search for all files and folders. Type in "recovery media" (without the quotes) then click on Recovery Media from the results window. Make sure you have either CD or DVD blank discs. For DVD burners, it takes 1 CD and 2 DVDs (CD will be the startup disc). For CD burners, it takes 7-9 CDs counting the startup disc. Follow the on-screen instructions. Once you have created these disc, put them in a safe place. You will not be needing them for this installation, it is just to have so you can delete the hidden recovery partition and use the discs instead.

If you decide not to burn them, that's OK too because you can always recover your system by using the blue ThinkVantage button at startup. The hidden partition size takes up about 6GB. It's your choice if you decide to keep it or not. Personally, I deleted it. Having the recovery discs is also good in case something goes wrong with your Hard Drive and you lose that partition. If you ever decide to revert back to the original factory state (when you first booted up your laptop), use these recovery discs or boot up with the blue ThinkVantage Button.

If you decided to keep the hidden recovery partition and wanted to use it AFTER you performed the clean install, you must reinstall ThinkVantage's Rescue and Recovery software from here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-61432

*NOTE: YOU CAN ONLY MAKE ONE COPY OF THE RECOVERY MEDIA. IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG, YOU HAVE TO RECOVER YOUR SYSTEM USING THE BLUE THINKVANTAGE BUTTON AT STARTUP IN ORDER TO BURN THEM AGAIN.

 

Arkit,

Goodness, I certainly will miss that old Avatar. I think it fit you much better.

 

Do you think it would be possible to copy about 8 of the cd's contents to two DVD's?

 

Yea, it's very different now huh? I liked the old but and I wanted something new for the new year. The new one is kind of intimidating lol. I'll switch back for you, Renee.

You should be able to do this fine, but make sure the first disc is a CD not a DVD since it's one bootable disc and then the rest are recoveries.

 

My X61 came with 7 CD's, 6 of them were WINXPPRO and the other one was a R&R CD.

 

my X61 did not come with a single CD!

how much would it cost to get all the recovery CDs so I could reclaim the used space on my HD (which is held for recovery).

 

Give Lenovo a call they would probably ship them free or just charge you shipping and handling, and that sucks no CD's.

 

I think maybe you only get the CD's with Vista Business or Ultimate?

 

My x61 doesn't come with CDs either and i think it's just the way Lenovo ship their laptops.

However, Thinkpad has a hidden partition that you wouldn't need a recovery disc as long as you don't change the hard drive. You could burn a recovery CD using the ThinkAdvan button (only can do that once).

 

What version of Vista did you guys get? I got the Business premium and also received CD's. Although it wasn't necessary it was nice to get them.

 

original state means partitions too? i mean if i have resized drive C, and added drive D, after restore from CDs or hidden partition, drive D will survive?

thanks in advance

 

Drive D will be gone, but I'm not positive. Can someone confirm?

 

hmmm...i made the whole process of creating recovery discs but i only inserted DVDs, the program did not tell me that it needs a CD for the first one.
Do you think this can be a problem ?

 

Probably not. Have you done anything to your system since the first reboot? If not, you can always test the discs.

Make sure you set it to boot into disc.

 

This is not an option as my system is now stabilized (lot of software and tuning) and i rather do not want to risk.Anyway, i have also kept the hdd thinkpad partition just to be safe.

 

Yea, that's a smart thing to do to keep the hidden partition. You have plenty of HDD space too. Smart move, objectref.