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    Major Software Issue

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by hydroxide, Oct 5, 2010.

  1. hydroxide

    hydroxide Newbie

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    I am running a Aspire 5602 that is several years old, I've never had any problems although I believe at one point I did restore it to factory default from the hidden partition. Then on Monday, I turn on my computer and I am greeted with the message that hall.dll is missing or corrupted and so Windows cannot boot. So I take a Windows XP CD, go to the recovery console and repair hal.dll, but it still gives the same message. So I go to the recovery console again and this time I rewrite the mbr and boot sector and resetup the bootloader configuration. When I reboot I see the friendly XP logo and loading bar, but of course after 10 seconds the loading bar stalls and XP won't boot. So I pop in the XP disc once again and this time go through the repair option--when I get to the point where it asks for a Product Key, I enter the key on the bottom of the laptop and it doesn't work. So I'm stuck. So I decide to restore from the hidden partition, I hear you have to use Alt+F10 or F10 at the BIOS. But that doesn't work either, and when selecting the recovery partition from the bootloader, I am presented with an error.

    So basically: what went wrong in the first place and how can I prevent it? But more importantly, how can I restore my computer from the recovery partition and if not, can I restore my computer from 3 self-burned backup CDs? (I guess I burned these using the eRecovery program). My last resort is to do a reinstall using an XP disc (given the sources of the disc I don't have full trust in the reliability of the OS once installed).

    Thanks for any and all help!! Much appreciated guys.
     
    hydroxide, Oct 5, 2010
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  2. downloads

    downloads No, Dee Dee, no! Super Moderator

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    Verify in BIOS that D2D recovery is enabled. Try few more times Alt+F10 when you see Acer logo on screen- this requires good reflexes.
    If it doesn't work go for those recovery DVDs- their content is identical to the content of a hidden partition.
    Just remember to set boot order properly so that DVD is first boot device.
     
    downloads, Oct 5, 2010
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  3. hydroxide

    hydroxide Newbie

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    I didn't know that I had to enable something in the BIOS, thanks. I will give that and the recovery discs a go and post back. Thanks again for the help :)
     
    hydroxide, Oct 5, 2010
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