How to use Lenovo OneKey Recovery Factory Restore

I have a Lenovo G450. I wanted to change the hard drive. The recommended way to do it is to use OneKey Recovery and burn a DVD to re-install the OS. Who has DVD-writable discs lying around? Not me.

Here is how to re-install the Windows Operating System that came with your Lenovo OneKey Recovery easily. You can even put this on a USB stick to make it easier.

  1. Unhide the hidden OneKey Recovery partition on your hard drive named “LENOVO_PART”
    • Use PTEDIT32.zip
    • When you open PTEDIT32, you will see all the partitions. One of them will be “type” — “12” which is a hidden partition type. Change that to “type” — “07” (like the others)
    • Save and reboot
  2. Find the OS image in the hidden partition. It should be under “LENOVO_PART\OKRBackup\Factory\OS.okr”
  3. Download this tool “Windows Automated Installation Kit” to get the program imagex.exe and bcdboot.exe (you have to install the program, then look around in the program files for imagex.exe and bcdboot.exe)
  4. Format the destination Hard Drive you want to load the OS onto. You could either have this Hard Drive connected as an external HD, or you could have loaded it from WinPE or something…
  5. Run imagex. Tell it to use the OS.okr image to write the OS to your desired destination. Like this: 
    imagex.exe /apply C:\path\to\OS.okr 1 D:\
  6. Once it’s finished, make the new OS installation bootable with: 
    bcdboot.exe D:\Windows
  7. Reboot and you’re done.

This make it super easy for you to backup and move your Lenovo Factory OS partition. No more stupid OneKey Recovery console, or DVD burning.

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