Acer eRecovery problem

Please can anyone help me...

Im trying to do a factory restore using the Acer eRecovery on Aspire 5100 laptop, which I set up using their wizard, input the password, ran from Vista, it has rebooted and is showing the Windows XP logo and the moving "progress" bar thing. However, after about 3 mins, the bar stops moving and nothing else happens, its been like that for ages now. Resetting the power starts it up and gets to the same point and stops again. I have used it before without problems, the hidden partition was there before I started (I checked). Now I cant do anything with the laptop at all! Can anyone suggest what I can do now? I didn't ever get round to making DVD backup disks. The machine is also 2 years old, and I dont want to spend a fortune on Acer's 50p per min customer service, considering they should've given me a boot disk with the machine in the first place. I only wanted to restore it as for no apparent reason all my USB devices stopped being recognized by vista.

Please can anyone help before I smash the thing to bits. Thank you!

Frustrated Acer user

 

Rather then start the recovery from inside windows, were you able to do the ALT-F10 method to start the recovery? Since you said the recovery has worked before, maybe you have a bad hard drive or memory.

BTW: If the laptop is 2 years old and you didn't burn the recovery disks, knowing that you didn't get any disks from Acer, you probably shouldn't be upset with the laptop.

 

Yes, I can access it with Alt+F10, but it ends the same way - freezing about 3 mins in and sitting with the XP logo on the screen forever.

Pasdoy, stating the obvious and having a laugh at others misfortune is really not helpful.

 

the HD seems OK as Im able to run a linux live CD and access all the files on the HD.

 

When I bought my used Aspire 5315, it had a bad hard drive. I was able to clone the recovery partition to a new hard drive, repartition the rest of the disk, and then recover the default installation successfully. You should create a bootable flash drive or CD/DVD with some disk utilities and attempt to test your hard drive and memory. Disk and memory is inexpensive now, so if you can determine if those are the problem areas, you should be able to fix things without spending too much money.

 

If possible, try to run a utility like chkdsk against the C:\ drive. If it passes, I would either consider formatting the C:\ drive and attempting the recovery again or attempting a clean install with a borrowed installation disk, using the COA on the bottom of the laptop. If you format the C:\ drive or do a clean install, you would have to restore the Acer MBR to be able to use the recovery partition again. You can find instructions for that here.

 

how did you clone the recovery partition and then restore from it?

 

You can use a utility like Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image. There are free linux based utilities out there that do the same thing but I don't have experience with them. I used Acronis True Image.

 

How many Gigs of Ram are on it ?

XP does not love above 2GB .

 

I think I'll give the Linux option in your link a try, thanks for that one.

 

Ubuntus multi OS loader has now allowed be into Vista, but Acer's crap eRecovery now won't write the disks! every blank DVD or CD I put in is spat out with an error code = 3. I downloaded the prog again from Acers Euro FTP site, and it wont install saying im on a non D2D system. Has anyone got any suggestions?

 

Either you have wiped out the recovery partition or you have overwritten the Acer MBR. If the recovery partition is gone, you will have lost the recovery option altogether. If it is still there, you need to restore the Acer MBR to re-enable it.

 

The partition is still there, still showing a PQSERVICE partition of about 7 gigs.
How do I restore the Acer MBR?

 

From the link I posted earlier:

That should work for a restore on an Windows XP system. For a Vista system, the file is mbrwrwin.exe and you have to run the command line window as administrator.

 

it won't change the partition type, every time I reboot, it resets to 0B. D2D is disabled in BIOS.

 

Just out of curiosity, is this an XP system or Vista?

 

Vista Home, as I mentioned in the very first post.

 

Yeah, like I can remember that far back. When you run partedit32, are you running it as administrator? Right click on it and select run as administrator. Same when you start the command line. Right click on the icon and run as administrator.

 

yes im running it as administrator, and I cant do the command line part as when I reboot the partion type has reset and I cant access it.

 

thanks for your assistance but im almost at the point of smashing it to pieces. I hope Bill Gate$ rots in hell for the frustration his products cause

I just tried a restore from disks created on another Acer laptop, it loaded some files an after about 10 mins said it failed, error 0xa000000e - very descriptive and helpful.

 

If those other recovery disks didn't work, I think you have either a bad disk or bad memory. Did you run any utilities to check them for errors?

 

how do I check the hidden partition? its not accessible from Windoze. If I give it a drive letter and try to run checkdisk it tells me I need to format it.

I think I might give up and install Linux, see if I can get it to work (although Im not hopeful)

 

Vista is a phearking bad OS, now they are trying to compensate this by creating SP2 pack and Win 7. Nevertheless, if you can't use the recovery disks then you should try and find out a Vista DVD and try to install a fresh Win, and then register your product, with your back licence key.
Try and download Hiren's boot CD 9.7 there you can find many helpful utilities.

 

That might be my only option now - the 10 mins of the restore process that worked have wiped the C drive! Now I dont have Vista or any other M$ crap on it at all. Think I'll now try Suse until I can get hold of a vista disk.

 

lol, that was quite a big laugh for me ^^

A "pro$" could do it better? He's gonna get the same error message. There is no difference just rather than a bit more empiric thing called experience and knowledge.

P.S. You can't buy anything with money. Or you can?

 

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -- Thomas Edison

 

Some posts have been deleted. If you don't have any helpful info to post about the OP question then don't post. Please stay on topic and avoid personal attacks.

 

These might have made me laugh too if I hadn't got so frustrated with this laptop. I just installed openSuse, now theres a whole new world of problems! No wifi, and still no USBs. I think the original problem I had - ie the USBs deciding they suddenly dont work - might be hardware, that'll teach me for plugging in an external HD, imagine not being happy with what I had inside

If I ever manage to find the copy of XP Pro I have lying around somewhere, I might try that next.

I dont suppose you have any suggestions re the USB issue? Can they get fried from an external HD?

 

Usually the USBs won't work if the chipset driver is not installed or corrupted. But if your USB don't work under openSuse either, IMO this means it's a hardware problem. Which, if I'm right, is not fixable(again, in my opinion).

USBs are connected to the motherboard which means something happened to the motherboard, a short circuit maybe..? Not sure if external hdd can cause it but I guess it's possible. Is the hdd damaged?

 

the external HDD is working normally on a desktop pc.

Is there a way to reload the chipset driver easily to rule that out before I give up and decide its a hardware fault - might try a slot in USB card thing, cant remember what they are called. Does the chipset have flash rom? How do I find out exactly what chipset it is?

And, after all the troubles getting Vista to reload - it worked by wiping the HD and booting from the Vista upgrade disk. Maybe Acer weren't so thoughtless after all, I'll need to change my username

 

I'm not familiar with AMD(your laptop has an AMD CPU right?) so no idea, I suppose there are chipset drivers on the AMD page. It should (re)install like a normal driver.

So you got Vista working? Are the USBs operational?

 

no USBs. All still staying "unrecognized device", its really driving me mad. I've uninstalled, rebooted, reinstalled - no change. Drivers all say they are up to date, but they are M$ ones dated about 2006, surely there must be more recent ones. Now Vista is downloading 80+ updates as its a fresh install. At least the card reader is still working - so if all else fails, I can still use my Sony memory stick , they might even be on sale somewhere, I should stock up.

Yes, this laptop is AMD Turion 64x2, will AMD have supplied all the chipsets? Is there any program out there that can give a detailed list of every hardware item on a system?

 

Well, normally, in Vista you don't need to install the chipset but you can if you want to.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_2336,00.html
Also you can try to uninstall ALL devices listed in the USB section, reboot and let Windows to reinstall them all. In my opinion though, this is a hardware problem.

As for this software you asked for, there are a few like Driver Detective or something, can't remember the exact name(s) right now.

 

I think I'll give up on it now. I just tried a pcmcia USB card which worked ok for a usb stick but not for an external HDD, but I think thats was a power issue as the light on it was way dimmer than it is usually. Looks like I'll need the pcmcia card and a powered hub.

Many thanks ATG, Paten and ComputerScience ! Your support has been very welcome and helpful.