X61 Service Partion, RnR and NTLDR problems

Question

If possible, I would like to get RnR up to the latest, and also liven up the Thinkvantage button. Right now it does not work. I may decide to abandon RnR and perhaps use TrueImage instead. Here's some background.
I tried to upgrade to RnR 4.2 but the system complained about the following:
Error 25013.Error obtaining the Rescue and Recovery environment drive letter.
Error 25012.Error accessing the Rescue and Recovery service partition.
I have successfully been able to backup with RnR 4.1, but can't start a restore or other activities using the Thinkvantabe blue button or F11. I can restore from my recovery CD (seemingly based on 4.2); however, though I was able to complete the process, the system complained that my backups were made with an earlier version.
In search of a fix to this, I created the RnR Recovery Repair diskette referred to here http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=56398&highlight=service+partition ; however, this rendered XP unbootable, and didn't fix the missing NTLDR message that appears when doing F11 or Thinkvantage button.
Upon further experimentation, it turned out that the system wasn't recognizing my hard drive any longer (after the RnR Recovery Repair process). I was able to get XP to boot when using Partition Commander software and then making my XP boot partition active. Thinkvantage and F11 doesn't work, in spite of trying various options in the Recovery Repair diskette.
A few other notes.
I downgraded from Vista to XP 7 months ago
I have two partitions for XP (excluding the service partition)
Data (E)
Preload(C)
I believe order wise in respect to partions the boot partion is the last one. See below.
http://www.tpchealthcare.com/downloads/diskmanager.jpg
I have not tried, but should I make the service partition "active?" Don't know if this is relevant of possible.
Should I give up? I have done enough customization to my computer that I don't want to restore to original XP state from the recovery disks. If that's the only answer, I will abandon RnR.
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

I have had a good few adventures with RnR, but now have it working fine and reliably. If I had a copy of TrueImage I would probably switch over, as it is a superior product. However, I don't, and TrueImage is expensive.
I imagine that the repartitioning that you made has played havoc with the boot arrangement. The bootmgr supplied with RnR does not seem to like repartitioning. The service partition should be at the beginning by default (?). It is not huge (7GB on 160GB is not really significant) and so is unlikely to rob performance.
Someone here can probably give you a nitty gritty solution but I would be inclined to image the system partition either with Ghost (with -id switch) or with RnR if you can successfully copy the backup to network drive or external HD (make a copy of the copy just in case). Then I would wipe the system with a factory reinstall using recovery disks (you made them right?) and blast the system partition with the image previously made with RnR.
This would obviously take a lot of time but shouldn't require much research or user input. If you do try to reblast with an RnR network attached backup, be sure to 1) backup the RRBackups folder before connecting with the reinstalled system and 2) format the system drive before reinstalling contents from backup (with OS recovery disk of new installation - in your case XP)