gdgt

Just thought I'd document this, since I don't see any real information on the internet about how to go about doing this.

I'm planning on selling one of my computers, but I needed to restore it to factory settings. Unfortunately, I've done many things with my computer, installed various linux distros, running a clean install of Windows XP and Windows 7, but one of the things I never did was create recovery DVDs in case I have any issues or wanted to restore it.

Luckily for me, I kept the recovery partition on my hard drive, but it was inaccessible with all my mucking around I did. I couldn't use the ThinkVantage button to restore it and pressing the "F" keys did nothing to activate recovery. So I on the the internet I searched. The consensus was either to reach out to Lenovo to buy new DVDs or to manipulate the MBR (master boot record) to unhide the recovery partition. I decided on the latter.

Here's what I did:

Downloaded a copy of GParted or you can use your favorite partition manager.

gparted.sourceforge.net­/livecd.php

I, then, changed the boot partition to the one that has the recovery and restarted. It booted straight into the recovery partition and kicked off the recovery. Now I have a computer that's completed back to factory settings and I didn't have to use one of my XP serials or go about the hassle of reinstalling all the drivers manually.

It's that simple. I'm assuming this works for computers that aren't ThinkPads, but your mileage may vary here.