Help! Restoring 5103 from PQSERVICE after Ubuntu repartitioning

I bought an Aspire 5103WLMI in June, my first Vista machine. Turns out, Vista has its problems... so it seemed like the right moment to try a proper installation of Ubuntu. Unfortunately, whilst Ubuntu installed just fine, it looks like it wiped the existing Vista Home Premium setup during installation. And whilst I probably prefer Ubuntu so far, I paid for Vista and I want it back.

So here's where I am. If I boot into Ubuntu, and look at the hard drive's partitions, I see:

• /dev/sda1 ntfs 59.97GB (PQSERVICE)
• /dev/sda3 ext3 47.26GB
• /dev/sda2 extended 4.57GB (boot)
  • /dev/sda6 linux-swap 2.06GB
  • /dev/sda5 linux-swap 2.50GB

In other words, it looks Ubuntu has given me one huge PQSERVICE partition.

Can I access PQSERVICE? Sort of. When the laptop boots, the grub boot menu gives me several Ubuntu options, and one 'Windows NT/2000/XP' option. (Note: not Vista!) If I choose the Windows option, I see 'starting Acer eRecovery Management Environment', followed by the XP boot screen. I then see the Acer screen, which offers me the options of 'Restore system to factory default' or 'Restore system from CD/DVD'.

I don't have any CD/DVDs, so I choose 'restore to factory default'. After entering a password and OK'ing a warning message, I see a progress screen *very* briefly: just quick enough to see it identify a 'source' of D0E0-something; and a destination of /HardDisk0/Partition2. Then it tells me: 'Restore failed - reason 0xd0000017. Click OK to restart computer.' So eRecovery is clearly working OK within itself, but can't do the actual recovery.

My guess is: it's looking for a suitable partition in which to reinstall the 'C drive', and can't find one. I'm hoping that, if I go into Ubuntu and reduce PQSERVICE down to a few GB (not sure how many?), and I create a new NTFS partition, then the eRecovery process will see the new partition, and will reinstall Vista into it.

Does anyone have any experience of this? And if not... can anyone advise me on how to repartition the hard drive to let eRecovery do its thing?

I'd like to end up with a reasonably-sized C drive for Vista apps; a similarly sized partition for the Ubuntu OS and apps; and a large partition for OS-neutral files like OpenOffice docs or MP3s. FYI, I'm quite happy to wipe the existing Ubuntu installation as part of the process; I haven't done anything to it which I can't re-do very quickly.

 

Hey!

I-m currently going thru the exact same thing...

Did you find any solution? Any way to make the Acer Recovery system to understand the partitions?

Thanks a lot!!! And hope you had luck

 

eRecovery does not work very well with Vista and ntfs partition.You can notice that is been removed from Acer ftp for most of the notebooks.
Without a recovery DVD,I was not able to start it,by pressing Alt+F10,only after I run some executable files from hidden patition -one being some "mbr" something.
It is obvious that Linux wil change you mbr and you will not be abble to use eRecovery.
Try installing Vista Home Premium with the serial you have on the back,and than check the files in the hidden partition with the help of a partitioning software -like Paragon Disk Manager.
You may have the chance to build a recovery disk,or start eRecovery at boot.
I did it with XP -can't be sure about Vista.
All this,though,is not worth the effort.Simply install Vista Home premium with your serial,with all utilities you need,and then,make a backup DVD(DL).

 

Maybe my thread can help? I had Windows XP installed, and had to reinstall the factory default cause of some warranty issues:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=175697