X60 Tablet - Broken Thinkvantage Button

I work for a small IT company here in New Zealand. We have had trouble with the X60 Tablets and Vista, so when a new one arrived today my boss wanted me to install XP Tablet onto this laptop.

I created a set of rescue disks, and after trying and failing with an install of Xp Tablet using a rescue disk taken from a X60T with XP pre installed, I used the Thinkvantage button to perform a full factory backup. I selected a custom install and removed some options that bloated the other two Vista X60 Tablets being used.

After successfully dual booting between Vista and XP, I removed XP and went back to the Thinkvantage button to restore to the backup. The option (F11) was missing from the screen and so Vista booted as normal. I used the button inside Vista to call up the Rescue and Recovery section but could not find the option to reinstall from the factory defaults so I tried to use the DVDs made earlier. The system rebooted and then sat at the 'push the Thinkvantage button' screen doing nothing.

Tried again to get into the Thinkvantage button - option F11 but Vista just loads.

Any help

 

Just found this:
computers that have a hidden protected area (HPA), also referred
to as PARTIES, and have the Rescue and Recovery program installed
will not be able to boot into either the PARTIES or Rescue and
Recovery workspace after recovering the original factory contents.
To enable the PARTIES area again, restore a backup using either the
Rescue and Recovery program in the Windows environment or by booting
from rescue media and then uninstall the Rescue and Recovery program.

Does that mean that using the factory defaults is a one hit wonder?
http://www-900.ibm.com/cn/support/download/attachment/JXFU-65258N/setup_ibmrr1178.txt