Acer Hidden Recovery Partition

[mrjamie]

Hi, I have a Acer 1522, the HDD has been formatted, I have the 2 CD-rom (Recovery CDs)...

As I have formatted the HDD due to viruses I can't access the recovery cd's via the software on the system. I was reading on another forum that these images have been created in Ghost. So I used a ghost boot disk to start recovery however it's asking me for a password. I tried 000000 (default)

Please help

Thanks

HI Umster, I have the system discs for all acer models, these are the intial boot cd's prior to the recovery loading, PM me and I can send you a D/L link

J.

[asousa]

Having been helped so much by these pages, like to say THANKS.

I too have regained ALT + f10 function after a lot of STRESS!!

1. use explore image wit Partition magic 8 or Acronis disk director.
copy and paste ??mbr.bin and mbrwrdos.exe to c:\ (root directory)
2. boot to c:\ prompt using win 98 disk !!! (Installed is xp pro)
3. at prompt type "mbrwrdos.exe install ??mbr.bin and press enter The ?? may be any two characters acording to stuff i have read.
4. reboot (windows finds new hardware - don't know what!!)
5. reboot again and at ACER screen you should see "Press f10 or ALT + F10 to restore.
6. keep fingers crossed. It worked for me.
7. mail me if you need help. I am a newbie though.

Are these 2 files hidden on the D:\ somwhere?

[keldor]

OMG Im in balls deep here.

Okay, I have an ACER 5100, not mine, friend from school ... being a ditsy female she cant remember her eRestore password, so after 2 days of guessing, I do what the guide recommends and thats format.

I use the restore Discs, it stops at 44% every time (batang.ttc) and stops.

I've read these forums like 9 times over, and I too have no Alt + F10 function

I followed the guides, found the mbr.bin and the exe, still no ALT +F10 .... in the mean time, i format again with my XP home disc to give me some sort of operating system to work with, and now I have no D:/ACERDATA drive.

SO its all up to the sneeky hidden partition from what i read.

so.... to sum all this up

1. I need a step by step for

a) getting my ALT + F10 to work
b) telling me how to deactivate Drives C: and D: and activating the hidden one so this machine will boot from it and restore itself....

2. Any ideas you Pros out there might have.

E-mail me, or MSN me PLEASE i've been at it for 3 days solid, and the girl who owns it wants it back .... she'll have my nuts if she finds out it's a paper weight at the moment!

masterstrader@hotmail.com

THX!!!

[keldor]

Are these 2 files hidden on the D:\ somwhere?

i found mine in the ISO file on the restore discs..... jsut used winrar to copy them to the C: and ran them. hope that helps.

[itHaKa]

i messed up with my aspire 5580 , i deleted the factory partition and had no back up dvd,
but i could successfully get to my acer to work

this is my cook book

needed :
knoppix cd
another win xp install cd
Active partiton recovery software


restore the deleted factory partition with "Active@ partiton recovery"
i was lucky enough to not overwrite that partition
boot the last version of linux knoppix
in knoppix go to the main menu ---> system -->Qtparted Create reorganize and remove partitions
click on /dev/hda .( mine was hda1) wait
on a list of partitions, set the factory partition as active , click on the first , right button set active , respond yes
the save the canges by clicking the diskette icon
answer yes
shut down knopix and
grab another windows xp install cd
boot with it and do as you are about to reinstall the xp
select install to the second partition be carefull here, install it in the C drive
when the other xp cd rebooted. it started the Factory partition and so the eRecovery program
then . run knoppix again and set the active partiton to the C drive ( hda2)
and thats it, hope it helps

Malvinas Argentinas

[keldor]

Okay! I Fixed IT! ... with no help either = (!!

Heres a step by Step How. My problem was that the restore discs stopped at 44% leaving me with a "NTLDR is missing" error, and a pc with no OS. I had lost the Alt+F10 function because of this. If this sounds like you, or you just formatted the drive, read on!

This is for an ACER 5100

You Need:
Restore Discs (Even if they dont work)
Copy of Windows XP
WinRar

1. Format the Drive (Fat32 OR NTFS it doesnt matter)
2. Install Windows XP (NTFS Format is part of it, so you could skip 1 if you wanted)
3. Insert Restore Disc 1, on restore disc 1 there is an .ISO file, this can be opened and it's contents viewed with WINRar
4. Go Download Winrar
5. Browse the ISO file, and find the MBRWRWIN.exe (may be slightly different depending on the machine, but SHOULD have MBR in the title) and RTMBR.bin file.
6. Copy those files to the C:\ of the laptop. Mine had an MBR.BIN AND a RTMBR.BIN ... ONLY COPY THE RTMBR.BIN .... from what i can tell the MBR.BIN fudges things up.
7. Now Click "Run" in the start menu and start DOS (type cmd into the run box)
8. get to C:\ and install the RTMBR.bin file.(if you dont know how type below)

cd C:
mbrwrwin.exe install rtmbr.bin

it will do a little "finding slot, added to slot 3" sort of thing, and thats it. then type exit. DOS will close.
9. Reboot the machine
10. It will say "found new hardware", let it install, then reboot again.
11. As it boots, hit ALT+ F10 and BANG! it should work!

if it doesnt, restart again, hit F2 (or whatever gets your laptop into the BIOS)

scroll through and on mine there was an option to turn on or off the ALT+F10, make sure thats ENABLED, and turn off quick boot to give you more time to hit Alt+F10

If it doesnt work the first time, try all the steps again, but it worked for me first shot. Hope this helps!!

Any questions my e-mail is stated obove in my "OMG HELP ME!" part .... since no one did I figured I'd offer up what i found.

this forum did help though ... thanks a lot.

[Q8PHANTOM]

ok i don't have the PQSERVICE partition but i have a 100% work recovery DVD and have a ISO image of it also
i have paragon partition magic
does creating a partition and copying recovery DVD files then doing like this will help

i have run the MBRWRWIN.exe with the instructions and found a new file in D:\eDS_PSD_drive.vmdf that is about ~2.9GB but Alt+F10 still doesn't work and still no PQSERVICE

[nutello84]

Hi all!
I'm seriously in trouble with my Aspire...
I'd like to format the HD and restore tha factory settings to clean the disk but:
1) my Mat****a DVD drive doesn't work, so i can't boot the pc from the recovery disk;
2) i've no hidden partition as i can see from partition magic... ( no d2d)
3) my bios, althought i've updated it to the last release, doesn't boot from any external USB drive

how could i solve this situation??? thank you very much!

[Ratchet]

I'm new to this topic and don't feel like reading though 11 pages, so I'm just going to ask what it is that I'm confused about.

1) In Vista Home Premium, when I go to Drive Management, I have my C and D drive partitions, and then a drive before the C that has no letter fixed on it. It has about 7 GB of data on it. Is this the Recovery partition, or something else? How does one even use this recovery partition if they wanted to?

2) I had thought about deleting this partition, I don't want any of that recovery nonsense taking up even a few GB's of space. Why do I need recovery if I don't care about any of the crap they throw on my laptop at manufacture? Can't I just format my HD like a normal desktop computer and put what I want on it? I downloaded all the drivers from acer that were availabe for my laptop, isn't this enough? If I remove a recovery partition will my Laptop be deceased, with only way of getting it back up is to send back to Acer? If so... this sucks.

3) I never got a recovery disc with my Acer, it only came with the Vista Home Premium disc. I have an Acer 9420-6775. Is this normal? (Update: I've been told my recovery is probably on the Vista Premium disc that comes with my laptop, not sure if this is correct.)

4) What is the easiest way to format my HD's? I tried using a boot disc and also my Vista disc at startup and selected boot from CD/DVD but for some reason this laptop doesn't listen and it just bypasses and goes dirctly into Vista.

5) Thanks for any help.

[Hillfly]

Can anyone advise me please.

I need to run the PQservice restore. I have no dvd backup discs but the partition is intact on my acer 5685. I can see it using Partition Magic in XP.

I want to restore the ALt f10 function. I can see the 2 files i need to copy to the root of C: but i can't extract them from the hidden partition and don't know how to do this? Any ideas? Partition magic won't let me 'unhide' the partition as th e option is greyed out.

My 2nd problem is i don't understand how set the hidden partition to active so i can boot from it. I have downloaded the 'ultimate bootcd' but don't really know what to do with it to make it work. Can anyone advise on this please?