mattpettengill.net

I need to take a little time to vent about a critical issue with the “Rescue and Recovery” software that was supplied with a new Lenovo ThinkPad computer purchased by my girlfriend (Model G530). The laptop itself is perfectly acceptable for the price that was paid, but their customized windows installation, including a disk partition for the “Rescue and Recovery” software has caused some major problems.

Apparently the “Rescue and Recovery” software is on its own bootable partition on the computer. For some reason, whenever the laptop was shut down (as opposed to hibernate or sleep) or was reset, the computer would automatically re-boot from the “Rescue and Recovery” partition, instead of the normal Windows Vista partition. As far as I could tell, this was just a stripped-down Vista install that only ran “Rescue and Recovery”, and it took about 5 minutes to load up to the point I could safely re-start the computer again. Once I re-started, the computer would boot normally into the normal Vista install.

Obviously this was annoying, so I looked to see how I could remove the “Rescue and Recovery” partition. First, I ran the program supplied on the laptop that creates backup Windows installation disks so I would be able to re-install a fresh copy of windows. This created 3 DVDs, containing the Windows installation files, as well as the software Lenovo had pre-installed on the laptop. Next, I attempted to delete the “Rescue and Recovery” partition off of the hard drive using the disk performance tools built into Vista. When I attempted this, windows would not allow me to do that because it was a bootable partition; fair enough. On to the next solution.

My next plan of attack was to use the backup DVDs to perform a clean re-install of Windows Vista - this is where the real trouble started. I put the “Boot” DVD into the DVD drive, re-set the computer, and pressed F12 during the POST screen to boot from the DVD drive. The DVD booted and a “Rescue and Recovery” splash screen appeared, along with a “Loading Windows” progress bar. After about 5 minutes, a message appeared asking me to insert disk 1, OS installation (The boot disk was disk 0 in the set). I put in the disk the backup program had told me to label disk 1 into the DVD drive and clicked “OK”. After the disk spun up, the same message appeared; please insert disk 1.

At this point, my confidence in “Rescue and Recovery” was starting to fail (I was already not impressed with it). Just in case I made a mistake labeling the disks, I inserted the disk that the back up program had told me to label as disk 2; after that disk spun up, I again got the message asking me to insert disk 1. OK. Lets try disk one again - same message. OK. How about disk 0? Again, same message. I re-booted the computer and went through the same steps again with the same result.

The “Rescue and Recovery” backup application that Lenovo had provided created a set of disks that would not allow me to re-install Windows Vista.

At this point, I was very irritated, but not completely irate. The computer, I assumed, would still boot into windows, and as long as it was put into hibernate instead of being shut down, my girlfriend could jump right back into Vista and do her work.

I remove the bootable DVD from the drive and re-start the computer. After the POST screen, the next thing I see is a message indicating it’s trying to boot from the network through the Ethernet. This is not good; the boot order was set to Hard Drive, Optical Drive, Network. This means that the computer can no longer find the bootable Windows Vista partition on the hard drive.

It’s obvious what happened here: the programs that ran on the boot DVD before asking for the OS disk 1 had modified the bootable partition to the point that it won’t boot into windows.

Did it format the hard drive? Did it delete everything? I have no idea as it did not prompt me to do anything or provide any information on the screen besides a load bar. Now my girlfriend is stuck with a useless laptop until I can get recovery disks from Lenovo or, barring that, I’ll have to spend $100 on a new windows disk.

Based on this experience I WOULD NOT recommend purchasing a Lenovo product to anyone. I’ve purchased new computers from Dell, HP, and ACER and have never had any problems with them, software, hardware or otherwise. The performance of Lenovo’s “Rescue and Recovery” software is completely unacceptable.

We’ll see how getting replacement disks from Lenovo goes. I called them within a few days of receiving the computer to get a replacement disk set (it obviously did not come with one), and have not recieved them after 2 months of waiting. I’ll have to call them again…