Does Acer Reimage?

Hey i was wondering if anyone knew does Acer reimage.

I have a little problem with my laptop it's an acer aspire 5310, I got it in August, I got the ram upgraded and XP on it as it originally had windows Vista.

Well i wanted to go back to Vista so what did i do i used my cds i made of recovery now this is the weird thing, it loaded up the recovery, it had successfully finished the recovery.

Well now the weird thing is, all my laptop does is boot up Acer screen and stay on a blank screen it doesnt seem to boot vista.

The Hidden HD is still there but Alt F10 doesnt seem to work on my laptop for some reason it used to before XP got put on it, but now it doesnt.

So i dont know what to do, any ideas can this be fixed? I really want to have vista back.

 

boot with cd and rewrite mbr

or use the start up repair on any time upgrade disk

 

Desw,

I was in a similar situastion with my 5570-4421: Vista would not load and the laptop was stuck at the same screen yours is.

According to Acer, it was the RAM upgrade I did...I didn't know that the 5570 requires a BIOS update for it to work properly -- i.e., load Vista -- when you put in more RAM.

Haven't tried it yet because I am waiting on the eRecovery discs to arrive before I do the BIOS flash (update). Am using XP now on it temporarily.

Good luck with yours...you might try running only one RAM module and see if Vista will load that way.

-- John D.

 

sorry to be a pain but what is mbr and anytime?

and yes i did get ram upgrade, do you think that may have effected recovery the Hidden HD is all there nothing got touched it does all the recovery it just doesnt seem to boot up vista.

 

I aucutally tried my recovery cds on virtual pc program that i put on my laptop and it worked! Very odd!
So it works on a virtual pc program but doesnt wanna boot on the actual laptop!

 

Desw,

No, you're not a pain...


MBR = Master Boot Record.

If you overwrote the MBR when you instaled XP -- which I guess XP has to do when you install it -- then the ALT + F10 key e-Recovery access won't work anymore. This is what happened to me (I guess, not sure), and so that's why I went ahead and ordered the Acer eRecovery Discs.

Although I did a format of C: drive before I installed XP (I prefer a clean install), I could still see that the Acer eRecovery data was/is still there taking up space on the HD but since the ALT + F10 keys don't work anymore due to the MBR problem (?), I can't access it, so I am waiting for the eRecovery Discs.

What actually happened was a comedy of errors of sorts...long story:

I had had that 4GB of RAM in for a while and it seemed to work just fine, no problems of Vista failing to load, and then at one point Vista disappeared and I got that dark screen (but the backlight was on) and Vista would not longer load. So I contacted Acer Tech Support and the guy says to use the ALT + F10 key thing...I told him that no longer worked (I don't know why...I had not reformatted C: or put XP on it yet at this point).

[But it did seem TO TRY to work ONE TIME, and I got a Windows XP screen saying something about "eRecovery starting"...and then it went off and nothing...and I had not yet put XP on it...the laptop came with Vista so I don't know why I got that Windows XP screen for a few seconds. Weird.]

Anyway, he said I could try the Acer eRecovery Discs, but it was looking like some sort of HARDWARE problem to me so I didn't order them at that point.

So I was preparing the laptop to be sent back in case it HAD to be sent back...I wanted all my personal files/info OFF it before I sent it in to who knows who would be seeing all my perosonal stuff...so that was the MAIN reason for reformatting C: drive (I used the XP install CD to do that). Since I couldn't get Vista to load, I couldn't access my stuff to put it onto CDs, so reformatting was the only way I could see to erase my personal stuff...the Acer Repair Facility could put Vista back on it if they found no hardware problems so I didn't mind sending it back to them with no OS at all on it...they'd have to understand it was for privacy issues.

So once C: was formatted, I decided to install XP on it just to see if THAT would work, to see also if there really were any HARDWARE problems causing the dark screen and Vista not loading, especially like something wrong with my HD going bad on me. I mean, if XP wasn't able to install, it'd probably give me an error mesage such as "bad HD" or something. So I installed XP.

But then, I had the SAME PROBLEM with XP that I had with Vista: Stuck at that dark screen just after the Acer BIOS Setup screen but just before Windows was supposed to load. This led me to believe I DID have a HARDWARE issue.

Still, I did some more research and found at the Acer Support site a BIOS update for the 5570 that deales with "two memory modules" or something like that. It led me to believe my problem must be a non-recognition of the two 2GB RAm modules I put it. So I took one module out and XP loaded up just fine. Tried the other module and it worked fine, both RAM slots were fine...it just wouldn't work with the two 2GB modules in it. The two 512MB modules thta came with it originally worked just fine, however.

So FOR ME it seems to be a RAM issue (yes, a hardware issue -- even though no hardware was defective -- but also a BIOS software upate issue).

I got back with the Acer Tech Support guy and told him of this...he said yeah, sorry, he forgot that the 5570 needed that BIOS update, and that "probably" was my problem running two 2GB memory modules.

So I hope it is.

As I said, I am waiting for the eRecovery Discs now. At least, it looks like I will NOT have to send this back for repair, as it doesn't seem to be anything wrong with any of my hardware, the HD included. Thats good news...who want to the hassle of sending a product back in for repar for who knows how long?

So I'm hoping that when I get Vista back on it, and do the BIOS update, I CAN run my 4GB of memory without further incident.

Later on, I wil buy a copy of Vista Home Premium Full Install (or Windows XP Pro to get that 2nd license to run a copy on two different laptops...I have XP Pro on my other laptop) and reformat C: again and put that on...to get a clean and lean OS with only the additional programs I want on my laptop, nothing else. But for now, the eRecovery Discs will have to do.

Good luck,

-- John D.

 

I tried a recovery disc on my virtual pc program and suprisingly it worked, The problem with the computer is it does the whole recovery from the cd it just doesnt boot up vista like it's supposed to and i have no idea, vista booted with 512 on the virtual when i changed it 1 gig it got stuck on the vista green loading screen.

 

Desw,

I have an aspire 5520 and something similar happened to me.

The MBR is an area in the hard drive in which resides a bootloader which has instructions for the computer. When you boot your computer this instructions are executed and your computer does what it suppose to do.

After a research in many forums I found the problem.
As Cloudcroft said, once you install other operating system the bootloader of the new operating system will overwrite the original bootloader, in this case the Vista bootloader... if that is the case, your original boot loader, the one that has the instruction to recover the operating system from the hidden partition when you press ALT F10 is history, is gone.

You can fix this by installing the Vista boot loader with a Vista installation dvd, this dvd has an option to fix the bootloader, once you do that vista will reinstall, but the Alt F10 will not work. You will be able to run Vista again.

There is a posible fix for the ALT F10, in your recovery partition there are to files:

mbrwrwin
rtmbr

By what I read it seams that these files can reinstall the original bootloader and the function ALT F10 will work and you will be able to restore your laptop to factory settings with the hidden patition or the restoration DVDs.

If you google those files, you will find many how to's.

I use DISKSAVE: a program from microsoft to backup the original bootloader just in case something goes wrong.
And if you want to run other operating system, I use easybcd 1.7, this is a fantastic progam, easy to use, just google it and theres tutorials for it.

 

Vista disc? All i have is 2 discs i made with the acer recovery program if that's what you mean?

Yup ALT+10 is completetly dead but the HD is there.

 

Okay big problem did recovery it seems to have put VISTA On my D drive, and windows xp is on C so i have no way to get to VISTA it's always windows xp that comes up! anyone know what the hell is going on?