I come to you for help: Acer Aspire 5810TZ Troubles

After scouring the forums for about the past two hours for solutions, I am finally caving in and posting a new thread.

Preface:
I am stuck being tech support for my brother who is living in Torres Vedras, Portugal right now. He is having some problems with a pretty new Acer Aspire 5810TZ that was given to him around Christmas time. The computer had been used for about a month before he received it and had a few programs installed on it along with the usual bloatware. I cleaned up what I could before he left for Portugal again and installed AVG anti-virus, MS Office '07, and Windows 7.

Now that he is back in Portugal he is having problems with the things he uses most on the computer (Built in microphone not working, built in webcam only working randomly for a short amount of time, and DivX failing any time he tries to watch tv or movies online) I've walked him through updating all the drivers and reinstalling DivX, but nothing seems to fix these problems and Windows 7 is starting to look like more trouble than it is worth to him.

Main Question: Is there any way to restore the computer back to the way it was when first purchased (with Vista or 7, whichever will work) without the use of recovery discs (He does not have any with him over seas) in a way that is simple enough for me to relay to him?

 

Only 2 methods I can think of:

a) Find out if there are any recovery tools stored in hidden partitions that can be used
b) get a copy of someone else's 1810tz backup cds and see if they work

 

Thank you for responding,

For A) Where should I tell him to look? I've never owned an Acer so I'm very unfamiliar with the laptop.
And for B), I think that might have to be a last resort to ship him over the cd's, but I have no idea where I would get them from

 

No problem, sorry I can't be more helpful as I don't really know the answer to a). I'd search the forum for recovery information, and perhaps try acer's website for information. Hopefully others in this forum may be able to help?

regarding b), if it works then it's a fairly easy option as you don't need to ship the cds - you just create images of each cd and upload the 3 files to the internet for your friend to then download and burn to cds himself.

 

Have u tried Acer eRecovery management under programs and the Acer folder? You shouldn't need any cd's.

 

Just curious, were the drivers installed for Windows 7 version itself? In the Acer India website there was a drop down list for selecting OS which I missed and took out the Vista drivers.

 

Tell him to try this: Boot into Windoze and then push Alt+F10. If the Recovery Partition is still intact it should give him the option to restore the computer back to the way it was when it left the factory.

 

You can get drivers from Acer Global sites(see attachment). http://www.acersupport.com/drivers_download.aspx

 

When he tried to install the drivers for the webcam from the acer site it kept saying that the webcam "has not been found" and it says to plug it in and try again.

We're going to try doing the restore in a little while when he finishes saving his files to a external hd

 

Just one silly doubt but still, do you know the manufacturer name of each and every hardware for which you are installing the driver?