Help With Recovery And More

I think I messed up my laptop big time. I just bought the aspire 9410 to replace a previous laptop that broke and was too costly too fix. I was moving while I bought the new one and everything was so messed up in my head. I always hate when new laptops like Sony or Acer come with all this installed crap so I decided to just give the hard drive a format with my copy of Home Premium (that I used on the previous laptop) but I used the serial number on the sticker on the new laptop. No big deal right? When I get to activate windows it tells me the serial number is in valid, buy a new one or enter a different one. Okay I try a million times thinking maybe I just typed it in wrong. Nope. So then I use the serial number on my Vista box. I'm thinking I'm not currently using it anywhere anyways but that one says it's being in use by another system. So I'm screwed. I don't have the recovery option anywhere since obviously it got deleted when I wiped the hard drive. Is there anywhere online where I can download a recovery thing for the laptop and it can go back to normal, like when I first bought it? And why would the serial number on the laptop say it's invalid?

 

you can.nt download recovery stuff but you shound beable to phone acer order replaccement set recovery disk if you did,nt burn back up set


did you del recovery partion?


you shound be able phone in activated you vista online if you got any time ugprade disk with you laptop you can use that install vista on clean then use key on bottom you laptop phone and activated it with microsoft then download drivers for you laptop from acer

 

Hi NoWayBack,

I hate it too like you so you're note alone... but why aren't you activating vista by calling there? I did this many times with XP, Office and Vista. I am always moving software, os and so on from one system to another so really no big deal call MS and you will be able to activate your vista. By activation choose not the internet solution but the one with calling bla bla bla...

Rgds Chris

PS:
BTW I burned the Factory disk on DVD and I am not sure if it is save to erase the first hidden partition used by the recovery.. any recommendation?

 

It does't matter !!!
Read the manual of your machine ,You probably will find the key , such as one key recovery ,because you did not erase the hidden partition used by the recovery.
If not so , Oh ,my god ~you are so pathetic ,you can't go to the former system!

 

You can't erase the hidden partition in normal state even you format your disk ,because the partition is protected. Barring an intentional format by tools such as PatitionMagic .

 

so your saying he can still restore his system back to the factory state then

 

Yes.
If only he did not erase the protected patition by PM or other patition tools .

 

@Vistastar
Ok, I am aware about hidden partition (and yes I can delete hidden partition) and so on and I would bet that Vista or XP would have their struggling if I would delete the hidden partition which is at the begin of the disk.
What I want to know is if i erase the recovery partition, would i be able to restore it only with the Factory DVD's (that i have already burned).
I wll try it my self on vmware so I will know for sure.

 

It is not easy to restore the hidden partition with your DVD's.

because the hidden partition has a segment of boot head data used to boot your computer ,but if even you copy your DVD' data to an partition and then hide it, it cant recover your system ,because of no boot sect .

But if you sucess ,please tell me. ^_^

 

No I mean I will delete the hidden partition because I won't need it anymore (at least I hope so), the goal is to build the system from the Factory DVDs and not from the hidden partition...

 

I know what you say , You certainly can build the system from the DVDs if only your DVDs are burned following the steps of manual !!!

 

So restore is working with the Factory DVD and bye bye the hidden partition, got a error message at the end of the 2nd DVD but no big deal..

 

id keep the hidden partition its only 10gb ..........gives you piece of mind

 

How can I find out if it's still there. I installed Linux for a few days to see how it was then formated again with the Vista DVD.

 

@anthony
Go to start and type "diskmgmt.msc" in the Start Search or Right Mouse click on the "Computer" Icon and select "Manage" navigate down to Storage and select Disk Management
Once you are there you will see a first partition on disk0 with no label and won't be able to explore it (EISA Configuration) and that would be this partition. I am a little concerned when I ear that you installed Linux and than again Vista and so on... you probably killed the partition unless you know Linux well enough.
@anthony99
I still have my hidden partition but what is the advantage to have it, I build my Factory Disks and it is more safe to have it on DVDs than only on the disk. I know for experience that Notebooks disks are a little fragile and have the tendency to break...even thought it is only 10G I would prefer use it has another partition.

 

sorry the first part was meant to be for nowayback and not anthony sorry my mistake

 

Yeah I killed it. The only thing I see is C:. I guess I'll order a recovery from acer or work with Microsoft to get this serial number to work.

 

Oh wait nevermind? I see Disk0 at the bottom.

 

Nevermind there's only C: on disk0 so I guess I did kill it?

 

No, you cant see that patition in diskmgmt.msc because it is a protected patition.But you will see it in patitionMagic ,if you can't ,unfortunately ,you killed it.

 

Yep you might be right but I see it under vista which has another architecture or different than XP, so again I see i....

DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ---------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 112 GB 1528 KB
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 OEM 10 GB 32 KB
Partition 2 Primary 51 GB 10 GB
Partition 3 Primary 51 GB 61 GB

Extrac from diskpart.exe from Vista

 

Nowayback,

I had founded out that 3 of my laptops, each one has 2 activation numbers one in the back of the laptop and the other is in the computer I dont know exacly it location it cuold be in the bios or some place.

What you were trying to do I had done it before but I had to use a program to extract this activation key from the computer once you have this number you can activate your computer, just search in google for -recovering a windoes activation number- or something similar ... this programs are free. I did this with windows xp. I hope it helps.

 

Bit confused. What if you swap out drives? Will the recovery disk you make allow you to install on a new drive? Or do you have to have the drive with the hidden partition to do that?