Acer Arcade has trashed Acer Aspire 5920

I have seen closed threads on this subject on this forum, but not found a "this worked" conclusion. However, I'm hoping that someone may know the answer, so here I go.

An accidental press (a cable fell on it) of the Acer Arcade button when the machine was turned off caused it to start up and install Acer Arcade (couldn't stop it installing) which appears to load in a cut down Windows XP shell in a separate partition and should, I'm told, switch back to the main VISTA environment on shutting down - but it doesn't! The machine just goes into hibernation mode!

I have searched the "net", spent a long time on the phone with a Technician, and basically nothing has worked - can get into the BIOS and have turned off D2D which was enabled, can't get to Windows Safe Mode, or VISTA. I can get into various forms of recovery options, but they can't find the operating system, etc etc!

I'm facing full recovery and losing everything that hasn't been backed up and spending ages reinstalling everything, which I don't want to have to do if I can help it! Also, I could go through this whole process and still risk the same thing happening again in the future, which is really frightening! So if I have to do that does anybody know of any way I could disable this awful button afterwards - this is supposed to be a working laptop, not a games and video toy!

I've got my fingers crossed that somebody can help

 

follow the following sequecne everything will be fine in no time..

1. press start/power button
2. once acer logo shows quickly turn it off by pressing button again.
3. press start/power button again it will boot into vista

thats all !! let me know results

 

Sadly no it didn't work. It just did it's usual and took it to the totally useless System Recover window which then subsequently says it can't see any operating system, invites you to load drivers for the hard disk, which you then can't find, and finally ends up with another list of System Recovery Options, none of which work. When you look at that list the info at the top says it all because below the "Choose a recovery tool" title it says "Operating system: Unknown on (Unknown) Local Disk".
It's like it's stuck in a tunnel - the cut down WindowsXP shell that Acer Arcade runs in - and there just isn't any keystroke combination that will get it out of it.
If you have any other ideas I'd really appreciate it, the machine is sitting next to this one, so I can test it immediately.
Many thanks for your reply.

 

Try this...

Boot into Windoze.
Go START. RUN.
Type msconfig
Choose the "Startup" tab.
Disable everything.

And Re- Boot.

Let us know what happens.

 

Hi, have you a vista disc anywhere, you might be able to boot from that and perform a repair..
Chris

 

i have been in exactly similar situation as i have also been a proud owner of 5920g before i recently upgraded to 6935g anyway!!! dont worry and donot lose hope i will get u fix this.. just make sure u donot do anything stupid and wipe out any of partitions, or overwrite the mbr..

ok before i go ahead with some more sophisticated techniques do this.. take ur battery out and let it sit for some time than turn it on and see if it helps.. if it doesnt than we will go ahead and go the alternative way.. make sure u have a access to a system with dvd burner and couple of dvd discs...

post back

 

Thanks both of you for your suggestions, but ...
1) Can't boot into Windows, that's the problem, if I could then I'm sure I would be able to do something. If you use the power button to start it then you end up in this useless System Recover, and if you use the Acer Arcade button to start it then when you exit that it goes straight into Hibernation in the WindowsXP shell that Acer Arcade is running in! Starting it up in Acer Arcade is the only way I can get to the BIOS screens where I disabled the D2D option as recommended by the Technician I was working with Friday evening, but that didn't help!
2) Unfortunately don't have a VISTA disk because both machines that have VISTA on (the laptop and the desktop machine I'm using here) installed the software from a disk image.
But ... that has given me a thought, in the old days of DOS you could create a startup system disk, is there any way to do that now?

 

Hi Visitorx. Have done the remove the battery and let it sit for some time without any success. However, when you say that do you mean put the battery back and then turn it on, or leave the battery out and try starting it on mains power which I haven't tried.
Really do appreciate all the help, and feeling more confident to know you have been in a similar situation before!

 

Now I have no more ideas..

Hope you get all sorted.

 

ok pamjw forget the battery lets put plan b into action.. let me know when u say it boots into system recovery do u mean u boot into acer system recovery striaght ? thanks

 

meanwhile download mini pe2-xt from here http://www.freshwap.net/forums/appl...v2k5-09-03-xt-updated-05-jan-2009-bootcd.html

it will give u all the tools to get this sorted.. its an image of cdrom u have to download all the parts and then extract the image file then burn it..

its a live cd and containts bart xp but with all the tools for disaster recovery.

 

it is also recommended that you download vista recovery cd from here

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=622

as you need to acces vista command line interface..

meanwhile when u download these two cd images.. go into your acer bios and turn ide mode from ahci to ide (this is basically mother of all evil) and give it a go again by booting the system normally

also i read from ur earlier post that u have turned off d2d .. TURN IT BACK ON

let me know results..

 

Just came back to computer and saw your 3 messages! To answer this one first, what happens is:-
Acer splash screen appears briefly (no option to press F2 in bottom left corner)
Screen goes black and after a pause you see large pointer arrow and then a pale blue screen appears with the System Restore window which on that first screen has default language as English US (can't change) and option to select the correct Keyboard.
I'm guessing this is the equivalent of booting straight into Acer system recovery!

Off to download the files you've directed me to now!

 

Don't know if this is relevant or not, but just scrolled down the information on this one and the illustrations on Figures H and I are the ones I see when I go through the recovery screens mentioned previously - with one exception, the operating system seen in Figure H is not shown on my machine, it is blank!

 

yes i recall it.. basically acer arcade turns primiary partition being hidden so that acer arcade could boot but being a conflct between acer turbo memory, ahci and ide drivers something terrible happens and somehow primary partition doesnot become active when u come out of acer arcade going into a vicous circle of acer arcade being booting again and again... this software glitch doesnot exist in 6935g as i tested it and successfully booted back into vista... once you have downloaded vista recovery cd and burned it let me know..

 

oh and also download http://rs158.rapidshare.com/files/64293596/Acer_MBR_F10_Repair.zip

incase acer mbr got corrupted but donot use it as yet we might use it incase something have messed up

 

hey wonderfull if u can see figure I

make sure you have changed achi to ide in bios

turn network boot to off

turn d2d to on

than goto command line from figure I

see what drives u can see

run this command

chkdsk DriveLetter: /f /r

let me know what happens

 

pamj once u have downloaded bartpe xt boot from that cd insert a usb stick in ur 5920g and backup any data that u want to save.. because in the end u have to restore the system acer factory default...

 

Hiya. I'm going slowly through all this because I don't want to make any mistakes, and I'm going to need to back off USB stick as well before I can use it, so may be a while before I have info for you!
One thing that I'm slightly confused about is whether I should be booting from the "mini pe2-xt" disk, or from the VISTA book disk! It's obviously going to take some time to get these downloaded and burnt anyway, so if I don't need both of them right now I'll just create the one I do need now.

 

well point of vista recovery was to get u to access command prompt but as you say you boot directly into it so its a good sign.. i would suggest tat you get mini pe2 for now so that u can recover ur data to a safe location example usb stick.. after that you can try and restore the os using acer recovery do u have now to get access to that ?

 

Hi Visitorx.
It's taking a lot of time to get the utilities I need - having to fit this in round some other things I have to do - and have been in a big learning curve re "torrent" files etc! However mini pe2 is downloading now so hopefully I'll be able to move on to the next step soon
Cheers, Pam

 

A quick update. chkdsk is running at the moment. Command line window title says c:\ Administrator: X:\windows\system32\cmd.exe - chkdsk c: /f /r
and it is deleting index entries, tons of them!
Is this good, or bad?
It's just finished that one, and now is recovering orphaned files!

 

Well, think things have moved forward slightly, computer now boots straight into recovery mode, but it can't recover.
Anyway, have managed to download miniPE but it's not an ISO file, it's a collection of .RAR files with one .EXE. Out of my depth here - how do I get to this "bootable disk" format or have I actually downloaded the wrong set of files?
Will be back on line this evening, got to go to work now!

 

Marvellous news! After running chkdsk for ages, miniPE has now allowed me to access the drives and I am starting to hunt out the information I want to transfer - already got the Outlook .pst files (most important) - so that when I restore everything I will at least have information to restore.
Many thanks for your help!

 

sorry pamjw coudnt reply to u earlier got busy and didnt got time to come online.. yes i was expecting file recovery to do lots of recoveries and file deletion exactly same stuff happened to me but lucky as u are i also managed to get my most important files out... after you have managed to get ur data back theres simply no point for u to still use the old vista os so now its time to do a full factory default which is done by

KEEP PRESSING ALT + F10 AS SOON AS ACER LOGO APEARS ( MAKE SURE THAT D2D IS SET TO ON)

this will take you straight to acer recovery software do a full restore and boot in a fresh os, install everything u had before and restore ur recovered backup data.

thats it !!! this is the only way to recover a NEARLY TRASHED ACER 5920G

hope it helped... let me know if all went well

 

Understand the not having time syndrome, I'm having to fit this in round a load of other things (like work!) as well
Not so confident about what I'm recovering now, it's more a case of what I can't see and date stamps, for example the Outlook pst file is date stamped 31st August 2009 but the machine died on the afternoon of 19th October!
It's almost like I'm seeing into a previous System Recovery area even though it says it is the C: drive!
Also, there are folders I can't see, and files, eg some .jpg photo files, that just don't appear to be there, I suppose this may be because the index has been trashed or something like that.
Did you experience anything like this?
There are so many tools on miniPE that I'm not totally sure I'm using the right one, currently viewing via the Windows Explorer option I found.
Haven't given up yet though!
Thanks for all your help, will give you an update when I do the Recovery!
Cheers, Pam

 

yes alot of jpgs went missing but i was lucky enough to get outlook data out... make sure u copy entire folders that u think might contain ur data.. theres no way u can browse a previous system recovery area as all user backups are encrypted and in image format theres no way u can browse them so what u are seeing is bascially ur vista c drive... just tobe on the safe side browse all the drives that u can see accessible.. this will make u confident..

2ndly dont worry about time stamps just take out as much as u can before going to do factory reset...

cheers!!!

 

Hiya!
Just wanted to let you know that Alt+F10 repeatedly took me into Recovery and it is now up and running as it used to be!
Now have to start - as you know - installing everything again, but that's life, isn't it!
The - sort of - good news is that, working from all these experiences, as soon as it was up and running with the basic Acer installation, I decided to bite the bullet and test the "accidentally hit the Acer Arcade button" scenario. And, guess what (you already know this one) it installed! But the good news is that now if you accidentally hit the button and go into it, and then on Exit it goes into hibernation, pressing the Power Key again takes you into the standard VISTA environment! I did test this a few times before I was sure that I was happy about this
Thank you so much for all your help. I wouldn't have managed to retrieve any data otherwise, and hopefully if anybody else hits the same problem this thread might save them some agro!
Thanks again
Best wishes
Pam

 

Forgot to say that I have now discovered that this machine has Acer Arcade Deluxe installed which is totally different to Acer Arcade, and you can run that software via desktop link and click on the close button and everything is perfectly OK. Did try - having gone into basic Acer Arcade - a couple of the options, and it hadn't installed correctly cos didn't recognise the CD/DVD drive, so this is obviously totally buggy software
Once again, really do appreciate all your help and support.
Best wishes
Pam