The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Man, I was so thrilled with getting this Acer at the price I did but so annoyed by the lack of Windows disks. I'm still not sure of the value of their "recovery disks" since it appears you won't be able to use them if the hard drive dies and you decide to replace it on your own.
The system recovery disks work even on a completely new hard drive. So if it dies and you replace it on your own, you can still use the disks to restore it to it's factory install.
Most other mainstream manufacturers won't give you "windows discs" either that is just how things are these days. If you want them you have to request them most of the time at extra cost. The manufacturers now make the customer burn his/her own recovery discs when they get the computer. This is cheaper for the manufacturers as it means they don't have to spend extra money and time pressing thousands of DVDs/CDs for customers. This issue is not only an acer one as Dell and HP etc are all now doing this procedure. There is a hidden recovery partition on the notebook which you use to recover windows and that is all you get.
adinu, are you absolutely sure of that? When I went the "help" file, it said if the drive did not contain the same file structure (that is, with a hidden partition") the reinstall would fail. I know it sounds crazy, what's the point of making the disks then. Unless my motherboard were to fail, I would never send the thing in for servicing (go ahead an ask my why if your curious).
I replaced the hard drive in my 5102 with a new seagate one a week after I got the machine. I was able to restore the original OS with the 3 recovery DVDs several times.
That's the whole point of making all those DVDs, so that you
don't need the hidden partition.
I mean idk, maybe things changed since (bought it august '06), but at least in miy case it worked with a completely new hard drive.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
