T61 Restore to factory defaults

Hi Guys,
I ran into a problrm with my T61 machine, It was not even booting, tried restore but didn't work as I never creted RnR CDs. I tried to recover with a vista version which comes with dell machines. it didn't work as well. Then I reinstalled vista using Cd which was for a Dell machine. My T61 booted as it was a first time boot, I recivered all files as this copied everything to windows.old folder...

But Now its not recognizing lot of things like graphics card wireless card.. and none of the lenovo utility is active. is there a way to restore it to the way it was shipped from lenovo ?

Thanks

 

You're running into trouble because you used a different manufacturers recovery discs for your T61. It installed all the drivers/programs that come preinstalled with a Dell onto your Lenovo. You could've restored your computer by hitting the blue button upon startup; you didn't need the discs to do a factory restore. Don't ever use another companies factory restore discs.

You're going to need to contact Lenovo Tech Support and inform them of the issue you were getting prior to your Dell recovery attempt and ask them to send you recovery discs.

 

thanks for ur reply, I had tried thinkvantage but it didn't work...

 

did Dell recovery disk mess up recovery partition? you can check by running compmgmt.msc. you should see a Service partition with EISA config. If you don't see it, then you need to order Recovery disks from Lenovo.

Lesson learned: First thing to do on a new computer-> create recovery disks

 

Damn I ran into this same problem. Would the supplemental recovery discs that they shipped with the laptop be the ticket? What would you do once you got the discs?

 

what do you do if your service partition is intact ? what are the steps as I don't see rescue and recovery options when use thinkvantage(blue button)...

 

there's a master boot record repair available from lenovo/ibm. I'm trying to find it now. It will restore the original thinkpad master boot record so that the message "press f11..." will appear when booting the computer. that way, you can boot to recovery partition and make a system recovery.

edit: okay, here it is: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-62978.html

 

Thanks for the tip!

 

My Service partition is healthy, I tried to run repairmbr.exe, it doesn't run , and throws message "is not a valid Win32 application.. what next ?

 

please read the readme of that utility in the download page. using that utility you'll create a boot floppy. you'll need a usb floppy drive, then boot from that disk.