Factory Resetting a Lenovo ThinkPad X201 Laptop

I can remember buying these 'fancy' laptops for our company Directors back in the day for around £1,200 each but today (in good working order) they're currently worth £100-£125!

Due to its age the battery is completely dead and will not charge but third-party batteries are readily available on eBay, Amazon and Aliexpress should you need/want one.

The recover discs are available here: Internet Archive

You will need an External USB DVD Drive as the X201 does not have a built in optical drive.

All you need to do is connect up the USB optical drive, power on the laptop and press F12 for the Boot Menu and then select your optical disc drive..

Choose your language and click on Next to continue.

You will then be prompted to insert the appropriate discs:

 

Some people report that at this point where it says preparing hard disk the process hangs, well my advice is to go and make a cup of tea or coffee or watch your favourite TV show as (unless your hard disk is faulty) it can take some time for it to partition, format and start copying files across to your hard disk.

 

 

I don't have the Supplemental Recovery Disc so here I clicked on No.

Now's the time to eject the DVD and unplug the USB optical drive and then click on Yes to reboot...

 

 

 

I would definitely recommend installing an AntiVirus endpoint protection program but not this one as the definitions (and the program itself) are way too old to be using!

There you go, one factory restored Lenovo ThinkPad X201 laptop retro for you to do some retro computing on!