Wednesday January 27
14:40
Lenovo one key recovery – how to fix it
Before I bought my Acer netbook, I bought a Lenovo netbook.
Right from the beginning, I got disk error. I decided wipe the C drive and install Windows 7 over the Japanese OS. It worked OK, but the initial disk errors bothered me, so I decided to restore the laptop to original state and return it. And there I hit a problem. Windows 7 had repartitioned the disk and one key recovery (OKR) no longer worked.
Eventually after a day of investigating, I did finally manage to get OKR to work again, restore the netbook to original state, and return it for a refund. So that time isn’t wasted, I’m going to post what I found out about OKR – because after searching around, I know lots of people are having issues with it.
Switched off, the OKR button is supposed to boot you to recovery mode to restore the hard drive. But if anything alters the partition information of the HDD, it stops working – instead it boot you into Windows.
The reason for this is that the recovery partition is special – it has a #12 partition ID, which is a Compay Configuration/Diagnostics Partition (details here). Most partitioning software doesn’t know about this partition ID and when you change partition information, such as by adjusting partition sizes or creating a new partition, that ID gets reset to something the partitioning software knows about. That stops the OKR key working.
To restore the ID, you need gparted on a USB key or on CD. Search Google and you can get it easily enough. Method:
- Boot into gparted.
- Identify the disk identifier for the recovery partition – eg /dev/sda4
- Open up the gparted console
- Type fdisk /dev/sda (ie. take the number off the identifier)
- Type m for help if you want
- Type p to print the partition table – check you get the same number as above
- Type t, then 4 for the partition number (replace with the number of your partition)
- If you want, type L to list codes
- The code you want is 12, enter 12 and then type w to write
- Do not use the GUI from this point – if you do, it will remove the code 12
- Exit gparted and try the OKR button. It should work.
An alternative is to set the boot flag on the recovery partition. The lenovo will then boot using the recovery partition.
- Restoring the Compaq diagnostics flag
Note: I could not get OKR to restore the computer if the C drive was any less than its original size. For example, if I shrunk the C drive to half its size, restored code 12 on on the recovery partition, and used OKR, then it would hang during restore. I could only get OKR to work with the partitions their original sizes.
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Thank you so much for this! Ive had problems with this for several days now! This REALLY helped me a LOT!
Great solution! I have been fighting this issue for a couple of days and you nailed it. Thanks for the post.
Hey thanks… it worked for me . Thanks a lot
sir
warm regards and appreciation for your good work
here you have told the system doesnt work if one has a shrunk c drive i want to know if it will work if one has enlarged ones partition drive i enlarged mine from 19.4gb to 25 gb will it work for me
thank you
basit
sir please help me with the employing your solution
i have increased the size of my c drive by 5 gb using 5 gb froom d drive the hiddden partition has been left intact
tell me how to go about it
also there is a bios related solution avaiable which says
before applying NOVO button for key recovery, go to BIOS setting, from Exit -> choose default settings, from Advanced Tab -> choose AHCI (option). Make sure the partition is as given by default for C drive. If it is changed just make it more than 20 GB at least
please help me
regards basit
sir please help me i have already posted my queries and they are shown as due for moderation .i m hopeful and waiting
warm regards
basit
Basit,
> here you have told the system doesnt work if one has a shrunk c drive i want to know if it will work if one has enlarged ones partition drive
> i enlarged mine from 19.4gb to 25 gb will it work for me
Certainly if you have changed partition sizes, you will have rewritten the partition table. That will have changed the partition ID of the hidden partition. You need to follow the method above to restore the partition ID.
However I think that even if you do that, recovery will hang if you changed partition size. You can try it, of course – but if it doesn’t work, you will need to change your partitions back to the original sizes, restore the recovery partition ID, and then recover.
Hope that helps.