Reinstalling Win XP on Aspire 5002

Hi!

I have Acer Aspire 5002WLMi laptop, an External Hard drive, 4 700 MB rerecordable cds and a dell windows xp cd.

I would like to reinstall windows xp on this machine so that hopefully it will start working little faster than right now. (Recently, I had to reinstall xp on my dell desktop and I was amazed how efficient it became after doing fresh reinstall).

I have seen following kiriakost post that should surely help me. Thanks kiriakost

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=284607

Now, the only question is whether I can do what kiriakost posted with cds instead of a dvd. or do i need to buy a dvd?

 

i think it will work,

kiriakost used the data in the hidden partition to create an IMAGE of a RECOVERY DVD on the SECOND HDD PARTITON, and then burned the DVD using eRecovery software,, which should support using either CDs or DVDs (especially since back when that laptop was manufactured DVD burners were not the norm in desktops or laptops either....

i've read thru Kiriakost's thread maybe 6 or 8 times and i see no need for that dell XP CD unless you trashed your hidden partition... and if we discussed anything more than saying that it is a VIOLATION OF NBR RULES and the MS EULA to use that DELL CD to install windows on any PC other than the one it shipped with!((just a friendly warning))

as long as you have the hidden partition on your HDD; KIRIAKOST's GUIDE should work great in making the BACKUP DISKS be it DVD or CD versions...

then you just boot off of CD #1 and follow the prompts on-screen,, and once the factory image is restored to the C: drive,, then contiune with the rest of KIRI's steps...


but kiriakost is the man to ask... i'm sure he'll reply to you tomorrow

 

Thanks bigozone for your reply.
Actually the reason i mentioned dell xp cd is that i remember few days back reading that one can use any xp cd with the product key mentioned on the acer laptop to have a valid installation...but maybe i read it wrong or remember it incorrectly.

anyway i was also hoping to not to use dell xp cd.
I also feel it should work but I will wait for kirikost to confirm.

 

Hmmm . i can only tell what happened to me .

I did my original erestore DVD from Acers windows software.
The media that i inserted was DVD , and got burned automatically .

I will do one wild guess , if the recording media was CD, i believe that the Acer software , automatically would adjust the burning process , to produce four CD's , instead of one DVD.

About the Data of the hidden partition, are not usable out side of it .
I did copy them for safety reasons .
With out them , the creation of the original Acer erestore DVD are not possible, even from windows, the ACER tools fail to work.

 

that is the one part of your procedure i still don't fully understand, how you did the recovery procedure from dos... was it a special APPLICATION that is on the hidden partition??

i'm gonna post this question in YOUR RECOVERY THREAD, so it may be better to answer it there where all concerned can get clarification of this issue since it seems to be a needed piece of info due to the ACER WINDOWS APPs failing to work so much of the time!!!!

 

Okey! after looking at erecovery tool more clearly...I am wondering why do i need cds/dvds at all. After taking backup of my whole computer, can i not just use erecovery option to restore system to factory settings?
Am i missing something or can there be any bad consequences of doing this way.

 

factory settings = Acer ORIGINAL files .
Not a copy of your C: drive .