Lenovo ThinkCentre A62 Deployment Manual page 26

Various types of recovery methods can be used to renew computer systems. The
Base Software Administrator program utilizes the full factory recovery method and
the custom factory recovery method. The full factory recovery method restores the
factory contents of the hard drive that consists of components such as applications,
device drivers, and the operating system. Factory components are installed at the
factory prior to the purchase of a computer. Using the Base Software Administrator
program, you can control the recovery options that are available to the user during
the recovery process. The following list provides the recovery methods you can
designate a user to perform:
v Full factory recovery only
v Custom factory recovery only
v Either a full factory recovery or a custom factory recovery
Components consist of applications, device drivers, and operating systems. These
components are in a custom packaged format and are contained in the service
partition of the computer. From a recovery standpoint, components are categorized
as follows:
v Required components are always installed upon recovery.
v Optional components are displayed for the user on the Base Software Selector
v Restricted components are not installed upon recovery, and are not displayed to
Manifest files: Customizing the recovery process is controlled with manifest files.
The Base Software Administrator program can create custom manifest files.
Manifest files have the extension .cfi, and contain information about the
components within the service partition where it resides. Manifest files also control
the selections available to the user during a custom recovery. The information
contained in a manifest file includes component categorization such as required,
optional, and restricted. In addition, manifest files contain meta-data, such as
descriptions and comments.
Preinstallation setup
To accomplish preinstallation setup, you can use the Base Software Administrator
program to create personalization files. A personalization file has the file extension
of .per and contains information needed to automate the preinstallation setup for
Windows. The recovery process reads the personalization file, extracts the data
from the personalization file and places the data in the correct Windows control
files. You can save time and effort by using the Base Software Administrator
program to customize personalization files and then deploying those
personalization files onto user computers. For example, you can create a
personalization file to set the Time Zone for Windows and then deploy that
personalization file to a users computer; therefore, a user will not have to manually
validate the Time Zone settings.
Personalization files: Personalization files are customized by defining the settings
with the Base Software Administrator program. The following tables provide a
description of each type of setting that can be defined.
The General settings table provides the settings used to define the user name,
organization and time zone for a computer:
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Rescue and Recovery 4.3 Deployment Guide
menu.
the end user.