[mdlug] T61 Thinkpad Recovery Partition

[Peter Bart]

On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 00:55 -0500, Michael Rudas wrote:
> --- Peter Bart wrote:
> 
>     Yes I did think of that but since I can't boot anything despite
> > successfully installing openSUSE, and the references here
> > <http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-46088.html> describing
> > just exactly what I did.
> >         There should be some sort of option in the BIOS; yes it's been updated;
> > to disable the recovery partition but I haven't seen it. I've been
> > through the BIOS so many times I'm going to dream about it. I then found
> > this
> > <http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Hardware/Clean_Hard_Drive_zero_fill> which promises to wipe a hard drive. That didn't do it either. Which would seem to prove that some partition is still protected?
> 
> Repeat question:  Have you tried to re-write the MBR (bootblock)?
> With MBRWiz, you can do so even if the drive is hooked up externally
> on another PC, or "fdisk /mbr" will do it from a MS-DOS 6/Win98/WinME
> boot floppy -- you can get those from http://www.bootdisk.com

	Don't think because I didn't say anything I've ignored that, just the
opposite! That does look most promising. I've been working on that
option. I didn't know you could have MBRWiz on a different computer
altogether, I'm not sure I have anything to connect them though. SSH
maybe? Since I'm using my install cd's rescue option to access my box,
and I don't have a usb floppy or cd I've been stumped. I just realized
that when I plug my handheld in the external memory card becomes
readable. That device runs a version of Debian so I should be able to
put MBRWiz on a 1gig flash card.
	Thank you all very much for all your help and suggestions. Since all
the firmware updates from Lenovo are in the form of iso images I didn't
want to start MS and the documentation turns out to be somewhat lacking.
I did go into the bios to check for the protected area, thinkwiki
referenced it but I didn't see where it could possibly be? I thought I
had checked things out between thinkwiki, Lenovo and what little written
documentation there was. Not to be :(

Best Regards,
-- 
Peter Bart <peter at petertheplumber.net>
http://petertheplumber.net