How I Tackled and Solved My Restore Failed Error 0xf0000024

I'm not a tech guy--I help people find work. But I had a problem with my laptop and noticed other people have received a Restore Failed Error 0xf0000024. I typed the error number into google and found this forum. Putting 2 and 2 together, I formulated a solution. I want to pass it onto the people of this forum as a thank you.

Basically, I have an Acer Aspire 3680. I got this error a number of times and I found it means one of two things: there is either something wrong with the CD eRecovery Disk I had to purchase from Acer or the Hard drive was bad.

Here's the history in non-tech language...and it's a good one!

I bought this Acer about 2 years ago and it was finicky from the the start. It began getting errors within 2 months and Acer tech support wasn't much help.

This first failure resulted after one of XP's automatic updates. Acer made me buy the eRecovery disks. I could never get there software based recovery (Restore) to work--ever!

I tried the recovery CD. It didn't work and got the error. I tried it again and it worked. But only for a while. Over these two years the computer crapped out for unknown reasons about 7 times, especially after I installed software like Mozilla.

After the 3rd recovery, the recovery CD wouldn't work. I bought another set. It wouldn't work, either. I took it to the tech guy where I bought the computer. He said my hard drive was fine but the CD was bad. He charged me $150 and it only worked for a few months.

Then it failed again this week. I tried to fix it myself.

So I had 2 sets of recovery CDs--both caused the same error.

They were dirty and scratched so bought a CD cleaner. Didn't work.

I started thinking about this problem. Took a day off work. it didn't make sense. So, I went and bought a new hard drive even though the tech said it was fine.

I had o figure out how to get the old hard drive out of the computer. I had no idea how to do it. After pulling all the screws off, I realized where it was. (And i didn't need o take all the screw off, just 2 for the hard drive panel.

I took it down to the store I bought it from and get a new one. It was a different size and wasn't sure if it would work. I wan't sure if it needed to be formatted (someone told me that word). I said to myself screw it! So I put it in.

Then, I tried the CD and it worked!

The only difference was in the original drive, the recovery used Partition 2. With the new drive it used partition 1 and it had to establish the partition before recovering.

It recovered very fast and I haven't had a problem. I'm using it now

In the end, I am peeved about:

1, ACER's poor quality control; I think the computer had an intermittent bad hardrive when I bought it.

2. The poor quality of training of the tech I went to--Acer's distributor. I even reasoned out it had to be the hard drive!

3. Poor customer service from Acer's distributor: they held onto the computer for 7 days before looking at it!!

In the end, I think I know more about computers! And I won't buy Acer anymore.

Thanks for giving me some tips.

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