How to recover WIN XP for noob? making a guide! help if u can!

hi there, i have Acer 5671WLMI WIN XP Home and it is really messed up, so im considering to reinstall it
... sorry for my english
... my HDD has two partitions: C, D (long ago i make em NTFS from FAT 32)
... i did back up all my files to D partition
... i have still my hidden partition untouched and eRecovery program as well
... i have ONE eRecovery DVD, which i burned after i bought my notebook
... the questions are:

1. Will there be my files on the D partition after reinstall? (i dont wanna burn 20 dvds...)

2. Will there be my hidden partition AND eRecovery program after reinstall? (cause they cant be downloaded from the acer site)

3. I have almost all of my programs(office 2007, photoshop,etc...) installed on my D partition, not on C rogram files :: will those work fine after reinstall??

4. Doing a recovery from that DVD or hidden partition: will it install all necessary drivers and unnecessary acer programs??or not? (one can uninstall em later,nope?)

5. Is it safe to do this eRecovery, how long will it take aprox., are there some risks or difficulties?

thanx a lot, guys, i would appreciate any help and please try to make this thread SIMPLE as it could become something as "guide to reinstall for noobs"
thanx!

 

Here are the answers to your questions:

1. The files on your D partition are not touched during a recovery process, they will still be there just as you left them.This is why acer puts the D partition there

2. Doing a recovery will not delete the hidden partition (called PQService) at all it will still be there. Erecovery is built into the windows recovery image so as long as you don't tamper with the image partition it will always be there

3.Office 2007 photoshop etc will not work after a erecovery because these programs need to be "registered" in the windows registry to work and since you wiped windows during recovery they will not be in the new registry. What you need to do is install these programs in their default locations i.e program files. The D partition although you can install them on it wasn't on really intended for this purpose, it is more designed for data backups and file storage, so don't put your program installations on this partition. You will just have to delete files and put them back each time. If you don't mind this then it is up to you.

4. Yes doing a recovery from the DVDs or the recovery partition will put back all acer software and drivers that came with your notebook from the factory. So you have nothing to worry about here, remember it is an image of what was on your drive when it left acer .

5. Yes it is safe to use the recovery process, if it wasn't safe we would have no other way to reinstall windows . The process takes longer if you use the DVDs approx. 1hr:30mins while if you use the harddrive recovery partition it will take only about 10-12mins. So you can see the hard drive way is MUCH quicker. As long as you follow the on screen instructions given to you it becomes an incredibly simple process .

Remember to activate recovery process hit ALT + F10 at the post screen (first screen you see that says "acer" ) to begin the recovery process from the hidden partition on the hard drive. You said you have one recovery DVD that is strange usually there are 2 of them, did you finish creating the recovery DVDs completely?

Hope this helps you...Goodluck

 

first of all i would like to thank you SO much!
i ve read some of your posts about recovering before and i see that you know a little bit about that so im gonna trust you at all and ask you some more questions, hope you will answer them

ad3: hmm so you are saying that next time i should install all the programs into their default directory, usually rogram files:, can i make there some more folders? - just to keep all the programs organized: like program files_ games, security, graphics,etc.?

i read somewhere that there is a way to put the whole :my documents: or :documents and settings: (one of those, im not sure) directory on the other partition, like on D ... as you said, D is for data and backup... so i would like to put that stuff on D (so even windows and all the programs would know that the default directory is on D)- is that somehow possible?? it would help me much, because without doing this would be my 55 GB D partition just for nothing

as i see now, i have that recovery DVD marked as " Acer eRestore DVD -1- factory" , so there should be another one, but the problem is that there is not...i lost it as i moved in in another flat...
so i should recover by disk2disk option, is that right? what was on that second dvd? is there going to be a prompt for create restore disks after i reinstall windows as there was during my first installation? if so, than i could make a new one.

so: i should unistall all the programs on D, make sure that my files are backed up on D, than restart, alt-f10, choose D2D recovery and follow the instructions and it shouldnt take more than 30 min.
then i hope there will be an option to make new recovery dvds
then should i install all the updates from win update site and then install firewall, antivir,antispyware,firefox and download and install all the other software i need...and thats it, yap?
seems to be easy...but as i know myself, somethin wont work is there a chance that it will ruin my win and it wont install new one? if so, what to do then to save my data??

oh, and final question: during the installation it would ask me for a win xp license key, am i right? should i use the one that is printed on my notebook?
thanx a lot!!!

 

1. Yeah you should use program files on the C partition to install your programs, and yeah if you want you can create program files subdirectories like program files_games etc this is completely up to you just remember that fact when you are installing games i.e make sure it installs to the right subdirectory.

2. I personally wouldn't move my documents etc to the D partition, what you can do is make backups or a copy of the contents of my documents and place it on the D partition (55Gb), I say this because whenever you restore windows my documents and other folders on the C drive will all be gone. So all you need to do when windows is restored is place the data copy of my documents back on to partition C. I do this all the time but don't forget hard drives can fail at anytime don't forget back ups to DVDs from time to time .

3.Yes if you don't have both DVDs then you will need to use the disk2disk option (hidden partition), this is your only option as you need both DVDs to restore windows using the DVD method.

4.Yeah you could uninstall all of the programs on D partition it is up to you the new windows registry will have no record of these programs anyway...

Use the ALT + F10 option as I stated and follow the instructions the recovery from the hidden partition will only take you about 10-15mins and then you will be back with a clean windows install and you can go about installing anti-virus anti-spyware firefox etc from there .

As long as you are using the acer recovery methods you will never be asked to put in a windows key the OS is an manufacturer OEM version and will never need activation. That key on the bottom of your notebook actually isn't the key installed within windows, that key is just there to let the world know that you have a Microsoft license to run windows. Don't ever give that key to anyone though because it can be used by them to activate another OEM version of windows(this is a valid windows key mind you ) and I am sure you don't want someone to get a free activation from you

Hope this response helps you...

 

i think me 2 have only one DVD and i have used it many times with no any problems