Acer Hidden Recovery Partition

Hum, have you already run a registry checker, checked your
drive for errors and checked for boot virus and regular viruses.
Also you might try loading bios defaults in bios. Also is your
drive first in boot order ? Also try starting in safe mode.

James

 

Thanks for your reply .... i have isolate the problem , and are the ACER MBR.

If i set the windows MBR to handle things , everything starts normally.

If i use third party , MBR boot loader , like the OSL2000 ... i am ok again.


I have come to believe that i need some one, really capable with Hex
editor, so to see my Acer boot record , and diagnose the bug.

I use Hex editors , but i have no idea about MBR programing ..

 

Okay, so are you using the right acer mbr for your notebook ?

Other than that it could be due to a mod you've made to notebook.

James

 

sounds like we need a machine code expert to decode that stuff and tell us what it's doing durring that 30 seconds....

it's an obvious delay loop that is either waiting for a certain key-stroke response or searching for a bit of data (or file) on the HDD or other drive

when the above search fails, the loop times out and continues to load.

what would they be looking for after the MBR has been found?

 

You might look at:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5034622.html

Never used it, be carefull and backup all data first, you already did right ?

James

 

i'm pretty sure KIRIAKOST's problems occur before any windows system fles ever load....

from my understanding his system is loading the ACER MBR, and then pausing 30 seconds before it ever loads any OS specific files....

the issue is why he gets the 30 second pause before the XP boot files are even loaded... i may be badly mistaken, but that's how interpert the problem.

and when not using an ACER MBR w/ the ALT+F10 support or any other boot utility then the delay goes away... but he is trying to figure out this F10 feature so we can all benifit from his work... so any help many more people than just him!!! it may lead to being able to create our own custom restore images that we can recover using the D2D feature!

 

look here:

http://www.mbrwizard.com/

Warning can destroy your notebook.

James

 

All this trouble for D2D ? Heck I have Vista and two XP installs on
my 5315. Takes about ten minutes to restore XP from zips and
about 15 for Vista from Diskimage. Should the notebooks drive
become toast, I'll boot my external XP USB drive and restore
all three to a new drive. Works for me.

Good luck and if ya use the mbr program, I'd recomend wiping MBR
and then write a new one. I'd bet the problem has to do with
the acer mbr looking for code, maybe a network boot. You can
disable network boot in my 5315, just an idea. I'll think about
restoring my PQ partition and see if I can fix it so it works.
Very busy now, lot of work to do.

James

 

Thanks James.

Its my mistake by not saying that i have all ready try the MbrWizard.

The free trial , does not let you kill your laptop .... it says register first.. i will kill your laptop later

But, the MbrWizard it does find the hidden partition, and informs you that ... There is one partition Fat32 , that by error its named differently ... do you like the software to fix this for you ??? No baby let it, as it is .

I will mail first the author of the program, and ask him , the same question that i had ask and to another one , who had similar program , that promises MBR fix and hair grow medicine too .

The other one , reply to me that his software can not interfere on the Acer MBR .
So , his software are good only as hair grow medicine !!

 

i see that many people have been asking about the napp cd or whatever it is called, now i have uploaded it to rapidshare




http://rapidshare.com/files/140665565/AMPP150W.iso.html


for people who wants to have a restore partition,
i have a suggestion! instead to restore alt + f10 and have the prq partition
then use Acronis*True*Image*Home, it is f11 you use there,

1 you install windows xp vista or whatever version you use,
2 install everything you need
3 install Acronis*True*Image*Home
4 create a secure zone, you will figure it out, choose a size that you will think is enough, i have chosen about 15 gigs,
computer will restart and make the partitions needed
5 create a system backup "full" to the Acronis secure zone
6 activate acronis startup recovery manager

i think it should be about right just did this on my system,

note: i just wrote this guide from my mind, so if the it is incorrect, then you will figure it out for yourself

 

Yes this is the first part of one old NAP CD .

I had examine the files inside , looks that the ACER partition its predetermined to be 10 GB ..
This must be for a Win98 or Win Me laptop.

This CD - FILE , Looks to do the partitioning only .. and setting up the hard drive so to receive the images for the partitions .

raserdk Thanks for the upload , even if its not usable for the many , its good as educational material .


.

 

Ok, i have very good news .

I solved the problem with the boot delay and the ACER MBR , accidentally !!!

I had exchange the old DVD drive with a new , from the start that i got the laptop.

The old Pioneer was stored in a safe box , and the new Panasonic installed.

With the MBR issue i got nuts , and the only thing that i did not test , was to install the old DVD RW .

I did so , and the curse lifted , the system boot normally , erecovery works as it should , D2D and from Windows , a healthy system in all .


I am a criminal because i replaced one old working DVD-RW with a new ??

Are ACER tech support unfamiliar with this issue ??? , if they do not know , or do not like to assist , they worth to be flamed .


.

 

I have a problem, i need your modified napp cd but i don't manage to modify it!
Can you please upload it!!!

 

The bootable.iso in my DVD its 120MB .

WinPE its a light Win XP engine .

(Just a reminder)

 

Sorry but I don't have any iso file in my DVD!

I just have a boot.wim


Where is your iso in your dvd???
And is it an iso of napp cd?

 

Right now i need one copy of the Mbrwr dos.exe , does any one have a quick link ?

 

Ok, i did it .

With the Acronis Disk Director Boot disk .... i copied all three partitions from the 40GB hard drive to the 160GB hard drive .
The 40GB HD was on a USB to IDE external box.

PQSERVICE size unchanged 3.125 MB .
My choices was ACER as 48GB - ACERDATA as 108 GB ,all FAT32.

And the most important than all , are that Acronis, can make a copy of the ACER MBR , from the one drive to the other , but only on demand !!

You have to click on the Hard disk icon , thats is in front of the horizontal line with the listed partitions , of its drive .
And you have to right click it, so to get the option.

My new hard drive is ready , i double test if the erecovery works.

And now its time to load software and updates .

In other words , i am done victorious .



Last tip : About the Acronis , its a extremely useful tool , but not get fooled , the called Freeware Trial version , does not do the job .

 

Very good for you!!!!

Yeah acronis is a very useful tool! Personnaly i use disk expert but it's the same!

___

I'm always looking for a napp cd iso in order to recreate my erecovery partition, but in vain...

Have someone got a modified napp cd for every acer notebook not only the c110???
Please!

 

Start searching Ebay.com & Ebay.uk ones a week .

Many people with dead laptops , selling them all the time .

Do not get any set , be patient to get the proper one.

 

In fact I'm not looking for recovery disc... I have two DVDs!

I just want an acer napp cd! It's a tool to recreate the hidden partition from the recovery discs...
Look to my first post where i quote "_ray_"'s post:

"You can actually use the D2D recovery CD version 1.5 if you modify it a little. You have to extract the bootimage from the cd, put a generic CD/DVD driver in it (e.g.: oakcdrom.sys), modify both config.sys and autoexec.bat to load the oakcdrom.sys driver and to skip usb-drivers. Then you just burn a new CD with the modified boot-image (e.g.: In Nero, make a bootable CD, use your modified image as boot-image, select floppy-emulation) and the remaining files from the ISO. Et voila: a working copy of D2D 1.5 for notebooks without external CD-ROM-drives.

Cheers, Ray."

He has got a modified napp cd which works on every acer notebook...

So i just need this iso!

 

The above are unrealistic and false , even if you made something that works that way , every laptop model , needs its own operating system and drivers.

The real NAPP for its model, its not for sale.
Its Acer material for internal use.


This is a picture of the files on the partition and my recovery DVD .

There is simply impossible , to recreate files , that are not on the DVD.

If you have a healthy PQSERVICE partition , there is lots of room for testing and experiments , if not , you are out of the game .



.

 

Yeah I think you're probably right...

But at page 86:
https://www.synapsenow.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/TM4400_SG_EN.pdf

This tool is the acer napp cd for this specific notebook but _ray_ managed to modify this tool (by adding a generic driver for cdrom) and now it works on every acer notebook...


This tool is used only by acer engineers in order to build the erecovery partition. (look page one of this forum)

I hope that you understand what I mean...
(and thanks for your answers!)

 

All that i can say are that, every one in this forum dreams to had a copy of NAPP for his laptop .

About the above ... I will become a believer only if i see proofs , and not words .
hypothetically speaking , and the donkeys fly too .

Yes the PDF document refers to files and methods of 2003 !!
Size of partitions and file system of 2003.



I managed to transfer the all ACER pack , from my hard drive to another, and all the details are here .

Many people saying stories just to impress the others .

There is no way to find or see any link in this forum about remastered NAPP files.

Its against the rules .

 

guys how do I fix this problem !

Now when the recovery starts near the end, I get these messages

Fail in creating or opening a file

Cannot find file C:\preload.tag


Cannot find file D:\preload.tag

Cannot find file X:\preload.tag


How do I fix this to restore my original factory settings ?

 

I have an ACER ASPIRE 5102WLMi
I have upgraded the RAM 2X2GB (4GB) and installed a 250GB HDD
I partitioned the drive Part1 = 50GB, Part2 = 200GB
I installed WinXP into Part1 did all the microsoft updates and tweaks that I wanted for a base install.
Then I used ghost to create an identical installation on Part2.
After that I used Partition Magic to convert Part1 to a Compaq Diagnostic Partition.
Boot into Part1 by pressing ALT+F10
Install ghost.
Ghost Part2 to image in Part1.
Now you have the best Recovery Partition available, a fully working Windows with all your peripherals working and a ghost backup of that working install.
It works excellent.
To boot into the recovery partition (Part1) and ghost the system partition (Part2) takes less than 15 minutes for a full recovery.

 

i own an acer aspire 4520. when i bought this it came with a linux os. i installed windows vista. now i want to create a restore disc. i tried to install eRecovery utility and a message prompt "not d2d system eRecovery cannot be installed".
i also found out that there was no pqservice partition on my hard disk.. can anyone help me with my problem? how can i create/recreate the lost partition. please help me..

 

i got something new for you, maybe you can play a little with this,
h t t p : / / r a p i d s h a r e . c o m /files/162101321/DiskFormatDT_V1-1D.rar
remember to remove the spaces.
cant really remember where i found it, i had to pack it with winrar because i am only allowed to upload 200 mb on rapidshare

 

I'm guessing for Acer Arcade? (thanks TehSuigi)

By the way you know it's illegal to install Leopard on your ACER laptop right..?

 

Yes it is illegal. Any further talk will end in an infraction or a ban

 

No it isn't illegal. No laws have been passed in any nation on Earth that says you can't install Leopard on any laptop you want. However it is against the EULA you agree to when you install it, which apple can sue you over. So who here is going to turn him in to apple?

 

It doesn't matter if someone will turn him/her in to apple, discussing illegal stuff is against forum rules as stated many times before.
NBR has like 2000-4000 guest users daily so how can you know if someone from Apple is not around?

Anyway even when I'm discussing and explaining this I probably violate forum rules so..

 

That is why it is illegal. It says no discussion in forums rules. Any more complaints and further action will be taken

 

Since the OSX' EULA clearly states that you aren't allowed to install OSX on non-Apple hardware, you aren't allowed to Install OSX Tiger or Leopard on your regular Windows machine (Intel or AMD, doesn't matter).

 

Hello everybody!
In the process of restoring aspire 2920 to factory settings(booted from alt+f10), notebook is power off. And from now i cant boot from alt+f10, vista is not working too. is it possible to restore boot(alt+f10) and vista like it was before crash ?

 

Yes, if you burnt your recovery disks.

Go into the BIOS and choose to boot from CD Rom first.

 

its not a option, i dont have recovery CD
any other ideas ?

 

Do you know anyone with a copy of vista, as this may be the best option for your situation.

Edit: You can buy copies of the recovery disks from acer.

 

user: support
pass: support

 

Did you get a vista anytime upgrade disc? you can use that.

 

Good Evening Folks:

bought myself an aspire 5315-2698 from a vendor here.

problem is.....erecovery non-existent, E toolbar gone.... instead of PQservice partition, an acronis Secure zone.
Acer arcade gone (actually its there, just not booting up from poweroff when i press the green 'e' button

Vendor gave me cripple ware.....but hey it was a rental unit, before I purchased it, and its' going to be fine....just finding out
what he messed up, and I'm going back to restore it under a subdirectory called 'recovered'

finding out what exactly is here.

Using H(elen)'s CD, looking for the deleted partitions. three programs Active@undelete, Getdataback Fat, GetdataBackNTFS

used it two days ago, found and restored a D2D directory, found rytools, but did not restore that....looking for it now.....

I know the stuff for recovery is here on this drive...restored two TIB files(totaling around 7 gigs) from the Acronis SZ partition. problem is Acronis wont look at them...maybe because its ' *.TIB" and not ' *.tib" (not sure....but wondering if i should rename the files....

Any way to fix TIB files so that they can be read? If no luck then I am going to try restoring the CD


This Hard drive is crazy!

Look here....

When I boot from Helen's CD and use the Dos Based Active Partition Recovery, Here's What I get...

120 gigger:

{[1][ 2..........][ 3.......................................][4][5......................................][ 6....]}

Partition 1 is unknown (reported as unallocated space, but who knows....?)
Partition 2 may be the Acer PQ Service (but who knows.....)
Partition 3 might be the active partition (Acer (C )
partition 4 was a reportedly a damaged partition of about 68MB
Partition 5 was reported as blank space (unallocated, but COULD be the AcerData (D )
Partition 6 is unknown reported as unallocated space (I think...)

and here's how its being reported inside vista, using windows Active@undelete

{[][ 1....................................................................][ 2........................................]}

partition 1 is the main C drive, about 96G and
partition 2 is the Acronis Secure Zone about 15 gigs with 7 gigs



So....here's what I'm going to do.

restore back to a subdirectory all the stuph they supposedly deleted. then copy all that to my NAS, then once the copy is there, delete that off the lappy drive.

THEN system restore back to the date when the last download was.

then backup all that to the NAS, in a ghost file.

then from my NAS iso the D2d, and hopefully be able to make a NAPP from it.

LLf the lappy HD

restore the acer mbr, and the correct partitons spaces....

Use the napp cd to restore the Pqservice parttition.

THEN get all that back to the PQservce part,

Reboot and hit alt-f10 and I should be good to go.

Crapware on it or not....I want to be able to access the media direct partion using the "e" key without having to boot windows.


SO.......that's what I'm trying to do

Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

oh, one more thing....."Helen's CD" ? yeah....Helen's Sure.....that's the ticket, yeah.....(jon lovitz eat your heart out)

 

Ok, download started ... i will explore the content .

 

Well, I just bought the recovery DVD/CD's from acer's support site, had them overnight delivery...$41.10....I figure its worth it b/c of I sont know if the files I recovered from deletion by the lappy's vendor is good.

Now if I could only get AndyAsselin to tell us how we can make our own napp CD's from the recovery discs, and a few items from microsoft then
We'd be all set.

because as I have said before....Got the Aspire 5315-2698 lappy for Christmas. Wife got it from a certain vendor, that BOOGERED up EVERYTHING software/partition wise in the lappy.

And that means.....
No Pressing the green 'E' to powerup into Acer's version of HP's 'media direct' ,called "Arcade" to watch dvd's, view movies, or what not.....

No pressing 'Alt-f10' to get into "PQService/Acerservice" Partition to restore to 're-virgin' the lappy: Acronis trueImage there instead. (I hate Acronis trueimage...like DriveImage XML better)

No pressing green 'E" key to get wonderful acer accesories (maybe to you its crapware, but to me I want it! So....)

And the acer acessories that are there, half of them are not functional.

quick check using Helen's CD (name changed to protect jon Lovitz, or is it Joe Isuzu?) turned up quite a few things.

turns out first partition (supposedly PQService, maybe AcerArcade) has been overlapped by the C (acer) partition (too timid to move/shrink the partition down, until I Image it to DVD's)

the D: (AcerData) partition has been deleted...or at least 'covered over' by the Acer Partition

there Appears to be a 68MB Broken PArtition in the middle of the drive...."I think that's the AcerArcade Partition, but then again i'm not sure...

And where the Last PArtition is (called AcerService) has been covered over by Acronis Trueimage. and you get there by pressing altf11

Inside Vista and on some reports of Partition Commander.... it only reports a 90mb C:system drive an ntfs filesystem in a fat16 (BigLBA) id and the pqservice partition.

Cannot find rytools now....dont know where it went.

was able to recover AA1.Tib and AA2.tib and put them on the system drive....but unable to open them, with ATI (even put them onto dvd's (what a waste.)

But! was able to recover parts of the D2d directory.... especially the images file where the "*.001","*.002", "*.WSI", "*.DSI" files are. If only I got that one guys forum post in time....then I would not have had to spent 40 bucks off my CC to go to the AcerUS Support site and order them.
...but as i cannot guarantee the quality of the recover I couldnt chance it...figured it's better to spend the 41.10 and get it shipped out to me, just to have it on hand.

well, like I said....here I am looking for a coveted napp cd just like the rest of y'all
and wishing I was an Acer Tech.

just want to get my lappy back to ship shape.

Oh....I wish I was a NAPP-y, NAPP-y SeeDee, that is what I truly like to be........and if I was a NAPP-y, NAPP-y SeeDee, every Acer User would try to download me......

 

Post edited because user were drunk ..

Under other circumstances that would be bad , but not in Christmas days..

About the NAP , there is no way some one to build one for all models.

What i believe that is the original NAP DVD... Are a simple image of one complete hard drive .
All partitions are in it , with all the files , and the proper HD boot record.

For its laptop model , they have one master HD image.

What they do if the HD are larger ? ... well they delete the last partition, and they create a new that uses all the available free space .

The bottom line are , that we believe that ACER uses complex methods,
but they do not ..

 

Fixed.

Okay so here is what my case.

I got my Acer Aspire 5920 and came with Windows Vista Home Premium. I immediately removed vista, and installed Windows Xp Pro (not OEM). As a result of me using a non-OEM CD the acer MBR got deleted.

Acer told me to buy restore CDs because there is no way I can now go back to factory defaults. Screw ACER!

What I did was download PTEDIT32.EXE and made the PQService (where the factory default image is) appear in "My Computer".

Then I downloaded and installed another non-OEM disk of Windows Vista Ultimate because I needed to install Acer eRecovery (Does not install Xp).

Then I went into disk mangement via "My Computer" and right clicked on PQService and made it "Active". Then I opened up eRecovery and chose to do a factory default format. From there, my laptop rebooted and everything installed fine and now my laptop is the way it was when I first opened up.

Hope this post helps!

 

Does "Alt + F10" works at boot up?

 

Yes after power up... with out delay .. Hold buttons for 5-7 seconds.

In Bios it must be enabled too... D2D

 

Thanks Evolution, your explaination is great!!!
You saved my xxx.

I am from Sardinia [Italy], if you come here i will offer you a seadas.

By

 

help am about to throw a relatives acer aspire 5040 out the window as the kids have broken it and deleted the recovery software alt-F10 wont work and ercovery software is not available from acer site..... pqservice partition is there and untouched how can i access it???? any help would be welcomed...drive image cant see the image even in dos......HELP!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

I posted this yesterday on another thread, some infor from another site on how to restore the ALT+F10 feature, they havn't got back to say whether it worked or not, but here's the info, hope it helps:

1 disable the D2D recovery option of the bios.

2 open a Windows session with an account administrator.

3 Download, unzip and launch partedit32(registration required for download).

4 Identify the Pqservice partition by its size (at the bottom of the partedit window there is a partition information box) it is a small sized partition approximately 2 to 6 G nce made change the type of your partition into 0C and save. Restart and open a session with an administrator account, you should be able to navigate to the PQservice partition. Seek these two files mbrwrdos.exe and rtmbr.bin once localised open a command prompt and launch this command mbrwrdos.exe install rtmbr.bin, this will install the Acer MBR. Close the command prompt window restart again Windows go into the bios and reactivate the D2D recovery. Now ALT+F10 should launch Acer recovery at the starting of the computer.

 

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