ACER Travelmate 2420 fails to see operating system and will not restore from disc. HELP!!!

ACER Travelmate 2420 fails to see operating system and will not restore from disc. HELP!!!

Hi

New here and I'm hoping that its not rude to jump in and start picking people's brains.

My Acer Travelmate 2420 now fails to see the operating system. When I use the restore DVD that I had made it boots up and after a while the recovery runs. I hit a problem when the machine asks for disc 2 to continue the recovery. Only one disc was ever made during the back up session.

A few facts.

Before the OS failed Acer Recovery and other Acer Programs had started to not function.

The C: and D: drives where NTFS Formatted.

I have even considered cleaning the hard drive altogether and installing a new OS. The problem here is that I can't get into DOS Mode.

Guys and girls, I really hope that someone can help me.

Thanks in advance

 

It looks that had experimental allot, with your laptop .

If you truly wish to make it functional again , the only way its to make the hard drive to look, as the day one .

1) Format the partitions C: & D: at fat 32 ... not the all Hard disk.
2) Restore the partition names too , as it was at the day one .
3) And try the Alt + F10 after power up .

Read the links on my signature.

 

Hi

Thanks

I had a look at your thread before I posted. I knew that when I seen it that this was the forum that I was looking for. I couldn't believe that I found it, and thank God I did.

The thing that gets me is that I can't figure out how to reformat my C: and D: Partitions back to FAT32. I know the commands but can't get DOS up and running to run them. I don't see anything in the set up when I press F2 that allows me to run DOS Commands. I think I'm missing something very simple. Do I need to download an old Windows 98 Boot Up Disc to burn to CD in order to get the BOS Prompt up and running?

Thanks for your responce and yes, I've been messing with the laptop.

 

Well , i got an USB Floppy drive , so to be able to use , the power of the classic Dos tools.

Do the same , they are cheap on eBAY.
Consider the USB Floppy drive as a tool , that with out it, you can not do the job.

Restoring laptops , its a Job .

 

kiriakost thanks for your help. It looks like its going to be a nightmare to sort this out, but I'll get there in the end. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks

 

I just thought of something really simple.

If I buy a new hard drive can I not just run the restore dvd that I have, as the hard drive will most likely be FAT32?

 

The new hard drive will be unformatted.

The erecovery DVD will format it .... But it will use all the available space .

The bad
1) If the HDD its more than 125 GB , it will cause corruption at the file system.


2) If there is no second partition D: ... the erecovery will be unable to store ,
you personal back up , of the main partition.


I got the New hard drive and the USB floppy drive ..
Made my partitions with Fdisk , name them at default names .

And then you can use the erecovery DVD to set up your system .

Why you have to do all that ...
1) Because ACER did not have in mind that HDDs will grow more than 80GB , when this laptops was on production.
2) The erecovery does not build by it self the second partition.


Got it


Second idea ... Send the laptop to Acer , so to install for you a new hard drive of your choice ..... you will pay the HDD plus a little more , and ACER will load the software for it ... and it will become perfect , like the day one .

 

Yeah, got it thanks.

I never really had that much on the hard drive anyway, just programs and the odd bit of music, all of which I still have on an external hard drive.

If I get a new hard drive I have access to a laptop with a floppy disc drive that I could format my new drive with and then install into the acer and run the restore. Not worried if I miss out on the personal back up just as long as I get it up and running. I can always use the same method and restore disc again if I ever need to.

kiriakost I know what its like to be on some forums and have new members come and post problems that have been answered a thousand times over. People get feed up with them and the new guy normally has a tough time trying to figure something out. Thankfully in this case this is not the matter and you deserve a medal from answering my posts. You're a credit unto yourself and to these forums who I am in no doubt are proud to have you as a member.

My thanks go out to you.

 

You are welcome ....

It was proposed to me , to become " unofficial ACER support crew ",
But i said no ... because i like to have the freedom , of being less civil , to the ones that not worths it ..

I do not meet often people, who can see that far, behind the scene.
I hope that you will stay in the forum , even if your problem got solved.

Take care friend .

 

Hi

I've been looking for a boot disk. I thought that there was on old windows 98 os at work, but there isn't. There's so may boot disks out there to download and I unsure which one I need for my job. Any chance someone could point me in the right direction.

Thanks

 

Google about " boot98se.exe "

 

Again

Thank you, found one.

 

Ok ..

Now be patient when using Fdisk , to avoid mistakes .

Take care .