Aspire 5100 help: unlocking PQservice partition

Ok...go ahead and laugh. I screwed up.

I had recently reset my Vista Home Basic installation on my Acer Aspire 5100 back to factory default using my recovery DVD. While waiting an abnormally long time for eRecovery to complete, I happened to glance into my "Computer" folder and was startled to see a strange partition there called PQSERVICE. I had no idea what it was, and the thought occurred to me that some hacker or something had taken residence on my computer. Not knowing what it was, I went into the security permissions and disabled access to the partition to the rest of the computer.

After learning via the internet what PQservice really was for, I immediately felt, well, idiotic to say the least, and tried to undo what I had done. No luck. The PQservice partition disappeared soon after from my "Computer" window, when the eRecovery "finished". Now I cannot reboot from my recovery DVD and I fear that this is my computer's last life. If something should happen to my computer, then I can't recover using my now-useless DVD. I have also tried internet solutions such as partedit32, which is supposed to make the PQservice partition visible again...no luck, as the programs crash out due to the security settings on the hidden partition. eRecovery is also gone as well, having failed to install correctly. If someone out here can be my guardian angel and give me a hand with this, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hum, I also have a Aspire 5100 but my recovery partition was never visible to begin with, and to make things worst ALT+F10 didn't work.

So I installed Partition Magic 8, (it says it's incompatible with Vista but it still worked), and i made the recovery partition the Active partition, then rebooted and the recovery utility booted, I restored everything to the factory default.

Try to do the same.

 

I just tried...Got fatal error upon opening "Init failed: Error 117...Partition's drive letter cannot be identified." Didn't even get past the splash screen.

Like I said, I disabled full read/write access to the partition...so I guess I AM screwed. Any other ideas? For example, editing the registry or something?

 

No registry has nothing to do with it, the MBR might be messed up, but if that's the case i have no idea how to fix it.

Btw how did you get that error when booting Partition Magic 8? If so did you get it when booting from the CD or are you booting it from Vista?

 

I don't have the Partition magic 8 cd...I downloaded it from the internet. I get an error when booting from DVD, I get an error when attempting to start PM8, I get an error when attempting to start PartEdit 32.

Quick thought: is it possible to delete PQservice right now? or do I have to get it visible again to delete it? If I am able to delete PQService, will I then be able to boot from the DVD correctly and recreate it?

All I really need to do is get PQservice visible again in my "Computer" window so I can attempt to reverse the security settings that I foolishly placed on the partition. And after that, recover to factory default.

 

Recreate it from the DVD? You mean the recovery DVD? honestly i doubt it.

Btw i used Partition Magic inside Vista and not by booting it from the disc. Install it and run it on Vista, it should work.

 

I'm still getting the same error... "Init Failed: Error 117 ... Partition's drive letter cannot be identified."

If it can't read the partition, is it a logical assumption that it can't get a drive letter for it?

[EDIT] BTW I googled the error code...has to do with Vista and incompatibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_Magic

 

That partition is supposed to be hidden, and innactive, it only boots if you press ALT+10 during POST, even without messing the partition up you can't do anything to it except making it Active

 

Well I don't understand why it became visible in the first place. All I know is that I locked the partition, thinking it had the capability to do harm to my computer.

What I did exactly was I right-clicked the partition, selected "properties..." selected the security tab and denied full access to my user profile.

 

Oh men..I got the same problem after I delete some partitions of my HDD b4 the DVD recover process.DVD recovery disk wont work so I reset my MBR using HITACHI Disk Utility (All partitions gone.No recovery partition now)

Problem with your MBR so reset it using HDD tool.If your HDD is HITACHI branded try HITACHI Disk Tool