Reset your Lenovo Computer with Windows 8

If you have try Recover Lenovo One Key Rescue after Resizing Partitions and may boot to OneKey Recovery, you shall be able to boot to OneKey Recovery to reinstall to factory default.

But as Steve mentioned in Super User: Lenovo One-Key Recovery Feature broken after resizing partition, you may also follow the [Remove everything and reinstall Windows] in How to refresh, reset, or restore your PC. It’s not free, you need to have a Windows RE Flash Drive and have access to PBR_DRV partition.

What’s in PBR_DRV Partition

You may use GParted and mount PBR_DRV with Linux command in terminal.

sudo mount -o ro /dev/sda8 /mnt

-o ro to mount as read only.
Replace /dev/sda8 with your PBR_DRV partition.

You will see three folders [OKRBackup], [onekey], and [System Volume Information] in PBR_DRV partition. The key is the [Factory] folder in [OKRBackup] as below. They are the factory disk images.

user@debian:/mnt/OKRBackup/Factory$ ls -l
total 11196538
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root    12055883 Apr 13  2013 Boot.okr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root        1481 Apr 13  2013 Info.ini
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10789709990 Apr 13  2013 install.wim
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   305049354 Apr 13  2013 LrsEsp.okr
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root         512 Apr 13  2013 MBR.okr
-rwxrwxrwx 2 root root        1107 Dec  5 05:35 $PBR_Diskpart.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 2 root root         523 Dec  5 05:35 $PBR_ResetConfig.xml
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   358422110 Apr 13  2013 Winre.okr

How to use PBR_DRV to Reset to Factory

You need to have access factory disk images in PRB_DRV to launch [create a recovery drive] with [Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive] in [Recovery] in Windows 8 Control Panel. With this drive, you shall be able to reset your PC.

If you create recovery drive without [Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive], you must have access to PBR_DRV partition or Windows RE won’t be able to read the disk image in it.

More Thoughts

If you cannot access PBR_DRV, please reference Recover Lenovo One Key Rescue after Resizing Partitions to fix your partition ID.

The info.ini configuration file in folder OKRBackup/Factory helps Windows to identify the original partition. Here is the content for my Lenovo C440. It helps to match partition image which has okr and wim extensions as mentioned in above section with partition name.

[Info] 
BakTime=2013-04-13 10:26 
FacBak=1 
T12Layout=1 
VirtualC=0 
BootType=3 
DiskCount=1 
ImageCount=4 
DataPart=1 
MBR=MBR.okr 
PartStyle=1 
Success=1 
[Boot] 
Format=FAT32 
Lable=SYSTEM_DRV 
Begin=2050048 
Total=532480 
Used=56144 
Image=Boot.okr 
DiskIndex=0 
Index=2 
Id={44E369E0-8999-46B2-B8EE-543781AE1D9A} 
Type={C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B} 
Attributes=8000000000000000 
[OS] 
Format=NTFS 
Lable=Windows8_OS 
Begin=3868672 
Total=204800000 
Used=66118712 
Image=Install.wim 
DiskIndex=0 
Index=5 
Id={4CC05C67-B961-4969-9E65-813676FED190} 
Type={EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7} 
Attributes=0 
[WinRE] 
Format=NTFS 
Lable=WINRE_DRV 
Begin=2048 
Total=2048000 
Used=785608 
Image=Winre.okr 
DiskIndex=0 
Index=1 
Id={9A65E2B0-0A63-4E95-BD8A-BC926C746A5E} 
Type={DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC} 
Attributes=8000000000000001 
[LrsESP] 
Format=FAT32 
Lable=LRS_ESP 
Begin=2582528 
Total=1024000 
Used=673680 
Image=LrsEsp.okr 
DiskIndex=0 
Index=3 
Id={D91D5DC0-18FB-4050-8957-7DE63FA803E2} 
Type={BFBFAFE7-A34F-448A-9A5B-6213EB736C22} 
Attributes=8000000000000001 
[MSR] 
Begin=3606528 
Total=262144 
DiskIndex=0 
Index=4 
Id={1371C185-E102-414E-A90A-7992D0B2F362} 
Type={E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE} 
Attributes=8000000000000000 
[Service] 
Format=NTFS 
Lable=PBR_DRV 
Begin=925573120 
Total=51200000 
DiskIndex=0 
Index=7 
Id={2B224D35-6471-45BC-8A25-639B949D2D66} 
Type={DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC} 
Attributes=8000000000000001

Reference

1. GParted
2. Introduction to Lenovo OneKey Recovery 8.0 for Notebooks
3. Lenovo C440
4. Microsoft: Windows: How to refresh, reset, or restore your PC
5. Recover Lenovo One Key Rescue after Resizing Partitions
6. Super User: Lenovo One-Key Recovery Feature broken after resizing partition