Acer can't/won't say how to wipe & reinstall

A few days ago I phoned Acer's local home office in San Jose, CA. I understand Acer customers, like any of the reported support lines, are hard to get thru to. Fortunately I called their home office as they kindly listened to why I was calling (Acer's recovery instructions conflict and can't be followed), eg; the instructions refer to uses of their "recovery media" disk(s) as opposed to either "recovery disk" or "system disk" (which's what those two 'media' disks are labeled and Acer instructions are 'all over the place'; ie; conflicting and uninterpretable).

Of note, apparently calls from Acer's H.O. and are answered by support after "one" ring. Because Acer publishes some 5 sets of how to's for recovering their AOA150 OS's and few to none of those instructions agree with each other, including the instructions that are mailed with the "system" disk, I decided to at least clear up what the differences were between the "recovery" and "system" disks.

After nearly 20 minutes of repeating my name, most all the details I'd already answered, not to mention having reiterated my question something like 5 times (likely their support people have a so called supervisor who loosely listens to the goings on in their 'boiler room' and pretty likely the workers soon realize to keep the super's off their backs, they simply ask for your name and everything again, just to make it look like they're on another call).

Anyway I finally cornered the person into answering that the 'system' disk (comes with the netbook) is supposedly to be used after having first pressed F2 at bootup, where 'we' change the boot order in the BIOS (like the supposedly model specific
'system' disk isn't capable of doing that for us, especially since all AOA150's must use a USB optical drive to read the system disk), then 'we' are to follow the BIOS instructions (as again, Acer is unwilling to make the effort at defining the twenty or so worded steps) whereafter 'we' press the F10 button and the netbook re-boots which is when recovery utilty prompts for "disk2" (as opposed to the "recovery disk", ie; guess they wrote the recovery utility before they named the "recovery disk").

Anyway, as well I literally had to drag out of the support person, the following (and he repeatedly acknowledged it after I reiterated it several time to be sure he understood what he was agreeing to), which was; when the next disk is prompted for, that's when the recovery disk will wipe the entire hard drive and/or overwrite all partitions and reinstall to factory condition.

But that's not what I saw when I did all that. Instead of supposedly wiping the entire hard drive, what I saw was a prompt stating that to continue would erase and re-install the c drive to factory condition.

Anyway, be mindful that it took me nearly a half hour to get the support person to acknowledge more than once what i dragged out of him, and that was that the "system" disk only contains an external copy of the recovery management utility and also loads a fresh set of minimum drivers so as to support (one of two ways) the restoration of the netbook to factory condition.

One either uses the netbook's existing recovery files (stored on the hard drive's d drive) to do but one thing, "overwrite" the c drive and it's partition. Or we use the "recovery disk" for wiping both partitons and overwriting and restoring both c&d drives.

The latter being the only method (I believe) that re-writes the master boot record and moreover assures that no virus or corruption remains on the hard drive.

But Acer doesn't/won't simply tell us this. Nor will Acer simply tell us how to to do anything but overwrite just the c drive and it's partition*. I'm not real certain if c's partition is wiped and/or overwritten, but in the latter method, both partitions certainly will be.

As for what 'all' I got out of the support call and hours of reading Acer's so called manuals, guides and how to's, was simply this; the "system disk" is used to enable either on-board recovery file access/use, that or it enables the same except that we can alternatively use the external media ("recovery")disk to provide a fresh whichever you choose (c and/or c&d drive).

Of added note besides my having pointed out Acer failures at providing clearly spelled out simple explanations of what the disk are used for (and how to use them), be aware that your $25 gets you a set of instructions for the "recovery disk" that as I read them, they don't match Acer's online available instructions.

And nowhere can I find Acer disclosing how to perform the latter more thorough method of completely wiping the hard drive and restoring it to factory condition (even when you call in and complain about it to their home office), or if one can find it, I've no doubt those instructions won't match what Acer says elsewhere.

What's wrong with this picture? I think it's a universal support issue dealing with: i-r-r-e-s-p-o-n-s-i-b-i-l-i-t-y, i-n-e-p-t-n-e-s-s, and/or s-h-e-e-r l-a-z-i-e-s-s.

 

Have just fought my way through a similar process on a 59xx laptop.

I agree the onboard (alt F10) restore does not re-format or re build the whole HDD, just the user/windows C drive partition. In my problem case it doesn't try to recover the windows 7 100MB partition either which was the location of my problem.

In fairness only proper paid for backup/restore apps can restore the ground they are standing on !

It is possible the self created DVD set (if they run outside windows) could restore the whole thing - or how else to recover from a virus etc that needs full reformat. I have not tried this as my system was throwing up disk errors which left me reluctant to burn any restore disks at that point. In any case I much prefer to take a full disk image (e.g. paragon backup/restore 10) as delivered and again when I have loaded my software etc and use that if needed later on

What I fear they would really like you to do is format the disk, install a standard retail version of windows and activate online using the key under the laptop. Then it's all your problem.

But seriously, every system I see had a different set up in terms of software load, partition structure and allocation. Whoever briefly "worked" on the build you have probably had a "good go" at the two recovery methods for that particular build, but was clearly NOT asked to document it anywhere.

So support know there are two basic methods, but what and how they do whatever they do will vary by OS and by model and by build. Now if they did paid support on a no fix no charge they would care about this . . but they don't so they don't need to worry.

Just my thoughts

 

tl;dr - usual sob story about Acer's goofy support

More honestly, wguru, I'm surprised you even got discs in the package to begin with. I had to make the recovery DVDs for my 6920G using eRecovery. Also a little shocked that you had two different kinds that apparently do different things.
Yes, the Acer-provided recovery media only wipes and reinstalls on C:, so that your data on the D: partition remains safe. That's the thinking behind it.

Personally, I stopped using them once I performed a clean install of Windows Vista. Since then, I've simply kept a rolling backup using Windows Backup (system image of C: ) and SyncToy (auto-copy of D: ) to an external hard drive.

 

Just FYI my 3 day old Windows 7 64 5942G has no D drive.
Windows and storage are all on one 500GB partition (plus 3 smaller ones for W7's 100MB, Linux DVD player and acer's system recovery)

I mentioned that the Acer FAQ's are out of date and that is one of the rather important issues.

Anyone relying the F10 recovery to preserve their data is now going to be more than a bit upset. (it would have trashed e-mail etc anyway)

I too rely on full disk images to external HDD, but traditionally have expected Laptops to come working well enough to make an image. I think Acer are still struggling with W7 builds

 

Thanks guys for sharing your experiences and/or information.

As for W7, I think I agree with what's mentioned, ie; I've used it's built in backup and several times now, it's restored the OS each time things started to go south (all I needed to do, since I don't regularly backup, was to copy my documents, favorites and e-mails to an external, then run the backup on my HP Pavilion where I run W7P.

As for W7, I think with what's mentioned, I strongly agree as I've used W7P's built in backup and several times now and it's restored the OS each time things started to go south (all I needed to do, since I don't regularly backup, was to copy my documents, favorites, etc., to an external, then run the backup where I run W7P, ie; my HP Pavilion). Not too sure why some settings are restored to default and some aren't restored to default, but worrying about it would be a little like splitting hairs.

As for the Acer's XPH SP3, since it's backup (as I recall) is woefully explained everywhere I look, too confusing and otherwise nearly useless, I still haven't (yet) tried any third party backup software, most all of them usually being pretty exacerbated and/or supporting certain systems. So I simply periodically copy 'my docs' and paste them on an external drive (so when I do use acer's recovery, all I need do is reinstall what few programs I run, then paste my docs, etc., back into the acer.). My latest TB EHD (a Verbatim-Samsung) came with Nero Backup, so maybe I'll give it a try sometime on the Acer (maybe not).

As for the Acer's XPH SP3, since it's backup (as I recall) is too confusing and otherwise, nearly useless plus I haven't yet tried any third party backup software, most all of them usually being pretty exacerbated and/or supporting certain systems. So I simply periodically copy 'my docs' and paste them on an external drive (so when I do use acer's recovery, all I need do is reinstall what few programs I run, then paste my docs, etc., back into the acer.

As for why I haven't wiped the Acer's partition and installed W7P or Vista* (which I hated), it's because I have some 'old' (hah) programs that won't run(well) on anything but XP.

 

I never bothered with the recovery option.
Too much bloat for one thing.
I prefer wiping the HDD clean and re-partition it to how I want to, then install the OS that originally came with the laptop using the OEM key.
Simple.

It's far less problematic to deal with, and you get a clean slate.

 

Me too.I don't even make recovery discs anymore.And the good thing is I never had to call Acer to activate.There is nothing than a fresh clean install to bring out the best in a notebook.