factory reset problem

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i have a Lenovo Thinkpad 11E that came with Win8 which i upgraded to Win10 during the free upgrade period. i have since learned my lesson about Win10, and want to go back to Win8. should be easy enough to do — there’s a recovery partition on the hard drive, so in theory i just go into the BIOS setup, select the recovery option and follow the bouncing ball to do a factory reset. alas, that doesn’t work — it just proceeds to boot Win10. thinking the recovery partition is probably a bootable partition, i set it to active and tried to boot with it, but i get a message that it’s not bootable. i’m guessing Win10 messed with the MBR and is thus spoiling that approach.

any ideas on how i can get a factory restore done? FWIW, i can see the files in the recovery partition with Partition Wizard, but i can’t access them from the operating system. there’s an AUTORUN.INF file there that i’m thinking will do the factory restore if i could access it, but i can’t figure out how to do that.

as a last resort i’m thinking i could do a fresh install of Win8, but i’ll need the installation key, and the Win10 upgrade wiped that info out.

lee

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naturally as soon as i posted that the answer came to me — all the files in that partition have the system file attribute on, so that’s why i couldn’t see them. so now that i can access them, anyone see any reason why that AUTORUN.INF file shouldn’t do the trick?

meanwhile guess i ought to do an image of the Win10 partition before i go any further.

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i have a Lenovo Thinkpad 11E that came with Win8 […] thinking the recovery partition is probably a bootable partition, i set it to active and tried to boot with it, but i get a message that it’s not bootable. i’m guessing Win10 messed with the MBR and is thus spoiling that approach.

A MBR system and OEM Win8 ought to be contradictory specifications. AFAIK, Microsoft required OEMs to install Win8 in EFI/GPT mode. Win8 can indeed be installed on a MBR system, but supposedly only users were allowed to do it that way; I think the OEMs were required to only use EFI (which, in turn, required GPT partitioning).

So how sure are you about one or the other of those statements? If you actually have a GPT partition layout, that would explain why you can’t boot the OEM Recovery partition by just marking it active. OTOH, if you were able to set it active as you’ve stated, that would imply you do indeed have MBR partitions. So can you perhaps recheck and reaffirm which type of partition layout you have?

You can check GPT vs. MBR by booting Win10 and making your way to the Disk Management screen. In the lower right pane (the one with the schematic map of your partitions), right-click the label where it says “Disk 0” and select “Properties”. Then select the “Volumes” tab and read “Partition style”.

I haven’t examined any Lenovos since the advent of Win8, so I’m not sure how much help I can be. I don’t know how current Lenovos implement their factory recovery schemes, but I doubt autorun.inf is going to have anything to do with it. Autorun.inf is strictly a Windows feature, meant for auto-loading a specified program through Windows Explorer. That doesn’t seem like a use scenario for a factory recovery scheme.

I think it’s more likely the autorun.inf you’re seeing is meant for the opposite purpose–to keep users *out* of the partition if they attempt to explore the partition from within Windows. HP computers, for instance, have used autorun.inf (as well as other techniques) to keep users from going “Where You Don’t Belong.” In HP’s implementation, if you tried to open the drive letter in Windows Explorer, then autorun.inf triggered loading of a simple program that, to paraphrase, said, “Go away. You’re not supposed to be messing around in here.”

My guess would be that Lenovo is using it for a similar purpose, so you’re probably chasing a red herring if you focus on autorun.inf.

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A MBR system and OEM Win8 ought to be contradictory specifications. AFAIK, Microsoft required OEMs to install Win8 in EFI/GPT mode. Win8 can indeed be installed on a MBR system, but supposedly only users were allowed to do it that way; I think the OEMs were required to only use EFI (which, in turn, required GPT partitioning).

i misspoke in my original post — i was speaking generically about the boot sector, not specifically about an MBR boot sector. what i was trying to say was that i suspected that the Win10 update messed with the boot sector and that’s why the built-in recovery option wasn’t working.

anyway, i checked what is currently there per your instructions, and the volume is now partitioned as MBR. so if it was EFI/GPT before the Win10 upgrade, then it would seem that the upgrade converted it to MBR, no? is that not a valid explanation of why the recovery procedure doesn’t work? or is something else going on? how can i go about booting that recovery partition with the current MBR? i’m a little out of my league here…..

also, maybe you can help me understand exactly how the “factory reset” option generally works? i was thinking that when i select that option from the BIOS menu, all the BIOS really did was just boot up the recovery partition and that started the recovery process. and FWIW, the AUTORUN.INF runs a program named “recovburncd.exe” which sounds like it’s going to do what i’m looking for, maybe?

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anyway, i checked what is currently there per your instructions, and the volume is now partitioned as MBR. so if it was EFI/GPT before the Win10 upgrade, then it would seem that the upgrade converted it to MBR, no?[/quote]
No, the Win10 upgrade definitely wouldn’t convert a hard drive from EFI/GPT to MBR. Microsoft would consider that a backwards move, from their point of view. So if it’s MBR now, it sounds like it must have been MBR before, too–and that flies in the face of everything I’ve heard about the way Win8 was supposed to be setup on OEM systems. I’ll take your word for it that it’s MBR, but that also means I have no idea what the heck you have (in the way of a Recovery partition) or how it got that way.

FWIW, the AUTORUN.INF runs a program named “recovburncd.exe” which sounds like it’s going to do what i’m looking for, maybe?

Well, that doesn’t sound like the kind of HP style blocker program I mentioned earlier. It sounds like a utility that might burn a factory recovery DVD, though not necessarily launch a factory restore by itself. If you can get it, a factory recovery DVD sounds like it would be useful because it might have all necessary drivers whereas a Microsoft DVD might leave it up to you to search out an odd device driver here or there. I gather you haven’t found a recovburncd.exe file on the partition to launch directly?

also, maybe you can help me understand exactly how the “factory reset” option generally works? i was thinking that when i select that option from the BIOS menu, all the BIOS really did was just boot up the recovery partition and that started the recovery process.

Yes, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But I’ve also read several reports that the Win10 upgrade breaks the original factory recovery option, and that’s also what Paul said in his reply.

You’re best option is probably to do a clean install from Win 8.1 installation media. Sudo has given you a link from which to download a 8.1 iso that you can use to create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive. As for recovering your 8.1 product key, you should be able to retrieve it from the Win10 system per this technique. Scroll down to the section where it talks about using the “wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey” command. (I hadn’t seen that page before, but tested it out and it does indeed return the old 8.1 key on a system I had upgraded to 10.)

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I gather you haven’t found a recovburncd.exe file on the partition to launch directly?

you gather correctly. i have no idea what happened to that .EXE, but it’s no where to be found now. possibly got zapped in the Win10 upgrade?

you’re best option is probably to do a clean install from Win 8.1 installation media

turns out i had a retail copy of Win8 from another computer that i upgraded long ago, so i just ended up using that and it’s associated product key, and that worked fine. but as you noted, now i’m missing a bunch of OEM drivers that i now must hunt down. but i also went to the Lenovo web site, and they do have an easy way to order a recovery disk for your specific computer, so i’ve done that as well. it’s being mailed to me, so the plan now is to just wait until it arrives and give it a shot.

anyway, thanks for all your good advice here. takeaway lesson for me is that you should always burn an image file for any new computer you buy ASAP. that way you don’t have to rely on any built-in recovery methods that might or might not work.

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takeaway lesson for me is that you should always burn an image file for any new computer you buy ASAP.

That’s a great idea!

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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As the recovery option doesn’t work you can try loading W8 from a DVD, if you can find one.
You could also stick with W10 – I use both 8 and 10 and there isn’t a lot of difference.

cheers, Paul

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You can download a Win 8.1 ISO from https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows8 and use http://wudt.codeplex.com/ to create bootable media of your choice.

As for the product key, you may have to contact MS to reactivate if you don’t have a COA sticker on the machine with the licence key, or it may auto activate.

Usually when you explain the situation to MS, I’ve heard they are pretty helpful.

An alternative is to contact Lenovo to buy a set of recovery disks which will factory reset your machine.

Prior to upgrading my Toshiba Win 7 machines, I created the recovery disks as well as system images onto media other than what I would use for future Win 10 images.

I also have my machines set to boot from DVD and USB before SSD/HDD.

That way I would have been able to factory reset and restore with the images should Win 10 not have worked out.

If you are able to get back to Win 8.1 then I suggest you do just that.

You shouldn’t have any problems free upgrading to Win 10 if you want to go back, either upgrading with a Win 10 install disk or using the Assistive Technologies link.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/accessibility/windows10upgrade

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Prior to upgrading my Toshiba Win 7 machines, I created the recovery disks as well as system images onto media other than what I would use for future Win 10 images.

yeah, that was certainly my bad. normally i do image backups before major O/S upgrades, but i got lazy. lesson learned!

thanks for the info about the Win8 install key. if it comes down to that, i’ll definitely pursue those suggestions.

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The factory reset doesn’t work because the W10 upgrade has disabled it – probably because there are too many “factory reset” options to work with as part of the W10 upgrade so MS just disable all of them.

cheers, Paul

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This site might be of interest
http://www.recoverlostpassword.com/windows-tips/how-to-access-recovery-partition-on-lenovo.html

Mark

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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This site might be of interest
http://www.recoverlostpassword.com/windows-tips/how-to-access-recovery-partition-on-lenovo.html

that article is a bit misleading. what it’s talking about is the built-in windows restore that will restore whatever version of windows that you are currently running. if your computer came with Win8, but you upgrade to Win10, the procedure they outline is going to give you a clean install of Win10, not your original Win8.

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