Comments on: An Unintentional look at IBM’s Rescue and Recovery Software

By: Tachyon

Tachyon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:12:54 +0000

Oh yeah, and absolutely make sure you run the utility to make recovery disks in case your hard drive or recovery partition are hosed too!

By: Tachyon

Tachyon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:11:29 +0000

R&R is pretty cool, if used properly, and regularly.
However, There are a lot of people that don’t understand the difference between the IBM/Lenovo R&R application, the R&R boot system, and the BIOS.

It’s important to understand this before you use R&R, and more importantly, before you _need_ to use it.

The first thing any IBM/Lenovo user should do after setting up their system is to run both ThinkVantage System Update 3, and Windows update. Do the required reboots etc. then, run Rescue & Recovery and make a backup. Then, do another one to an external drive. It’s up to you if you want to include your applications in this initial backup or do another backup after you install them.

Now run regular R&R backups, or let it run on a schedule (it has that feature, to run automatically)

If you ever have a system problem, you’ll be covered and able to recover from most any situation.

Tachyon

By: Vince Anido

Vince Anido — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:55:53 +0000

I believe you must use the Rescue and Recovery console to unpack those images. If you have previously used the software to create backups, then you will have the option to restore those specific backups.

Otherwise, I think you’ll only have the option of restoring to factory default. It’s most likely that that recovery folder is simply a compressed windows installation image, and if you’ve already restored to factory defaults, there isn’t anything in there that you might need.

By: bryant

bryant — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:06:34 +0000

I had this same problem today. I copied the entire drive (which was only a few folders and loose files) and restored to the beginning. One folder, entitled recovery, is about 3 gigs and is full of what I think are disk images. I was wondering how you unpack these and thought maybe you knew.

By: Vince Anido

Vince Anido — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 04:03:51 +0000

The exact error was a blue screen during startup that said something like: “Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM”

If you are having issues, you should go to:

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=307545

and see if that helps.

Good luck.

By: John Jacob

John Jacob — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 03:54:17 +0000

Clarify why this registry error

By: Vince Anido

Vince Anido — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 18:48:35 +0000

I’m not sure I understand your issue Wai Lam. Could you please clarify what problems you’re having?

By: Wai Lam

Wai Lam — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:51:25 +0000

Have you experience a issue where the F11 key is not appearing or functioning to restore a IBM x41 tablet?

By: Crashless

Crashless — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 03:28:02 +0000

Thanks Eric. Your blog has been a great resource for me as I too try to become YABHTU.

XPOINT looks pretty nice, a great option for those who would otherwise have no recovery software to start with. Looking at the feature list, I can see a lot of strategies that it has in common with R&R.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to talk too.

-Vince

By: Eric mack

Eric mack — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:56:26 +0000

Thanks for sharing your experience, Crashless. Though I’ve yet to fully deploy it, you may want to have a look at XPOINT pro – these are the folks that wrote the IBM R&R system. The full version allows greater control over backups & recovery.

When I finally decided to reload my M4, I plan to use XPOINT.

Meanwhile, I enjoy reading your blog. Happy to chat sometime.

Warm regards,

Eric