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Acer Aspire 5553 Windows 7 restore disk


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I don't suppose anyone has one of these laptops? If so I would be very greatfull to get my hands on a set of Windows 7 restore disks. It is for this woman I know (the same one with the disability allowance problems). Seems a bloke in the UK 'fixed' her laptop by repartioning the HDD and removing the recovery partition. Since then she has got a virus that I can't clear and as there is no data on the drive it is much easier to restore the laptop and no she does not want Linux on it before anyone suggests it. [;-)] Quite happy to stick a cheque in the post for any expenses.
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sorry, don't have recovery disks but...

Can you access the main menus or boot up in safe mode?

Most Acer PCs have a recovery program on the start menu for creating a set of disks. Have you checked if you can make set of disks from there?

It is usually called  'recovery management' or similar.

start/all programs/acer/acer recovery management

You may even be able to download the program from somewhere like here.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Acer-eRecovery-Management.shtml

that may be a possibility.

Of course, if it all depends on that program accessing the hidden partition then that won't work.

You could try to contact Acer to ask for a restoration disk kit as suggested here

Danny

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The problem is it has the 'blue screen of death' with nothing on it just a cursor (which does move). Alt F10 does not work and I have checked the Bios settings so there is no way of getting 'inside' the machine to create the disks. Whilst I can get the F8 menu up whatever I select will always bring me to the 'BSD' and no further. I have tried all the other things like returning it to the last known working copy etc with no success. This is why the only way I can see is to use the disk, if I had them. My feeling is the hidden partition has been removed and the 'expert' has just stuck an OEM version of Windows 7 on it.
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Thanks Danny but I had already thought of that one and it isn't there. I have just emailed Acer and asked if they can send me a copy of the disks. Alternatively there is a guy in the UK who advertises as a PC engineer on the net that can send them for £25. Thing is when I looked at his website it was a bit 'flash' looking and I didn't feel comfortable with it.
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Yes it is on the bottom of the unit. The version of windows is home edition 64 bit. Being as the Acer version is 'tailored' by Acer (drivers etc) I don't know if the key will run with another OEM copy and of course you would loose the the ability to have a restore partition. I guess if possible I would like to put it back as it came out the box (with restore disks this time) so that if it breaks and somebody else looks at it they will see it as a standard machine. Somebody has very kindly offered me a copy and I have the key for the laptop but I will wait and see what response I get from Acer before going an alternative route. Thanks anyway.

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And ironically despite all this womans other serious problems, in this day and age the loss of internet access in France is a major problem especially for a foreigner out on a limb who may not speak English.

When I arrived in 2005 I had been used to finding an internet café literally every few doors apart in any town in the poorest of countries like Bolivia, a huge shock to find that here the nearest one was 70km away at the university and when I arrived it was closed for a strike, when I returned it was closed for the whole of July and August, no sign on the door it was assumed that everyone would know, and I guess every French person would. Eventually I found a library not to far away that let me use their computer but it cost me a fortune and they werent supposed to do so.

I doubt that the situation is much better now, maybe even worse, there still are no internet cafes and most of my neighbours dont have the internet but sons/daughters and younger family members of course do.

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Well she has a tablet which I have managed to set up for her. I have not come across SFR routers or their service before. I found it rather strange that the SFR technician who installed her system left her in such a mess. He showed her how to connect her tablet via WiFi and when she showed me the (complicated) method I was appalled. Basically he has set it up as a Hotspot and told her that was the way she connected to her own WiFi. Thing is it forgets the settings so she has to login every time. I have now changed this and connected her 'normally' plus I have switched the 'Hotspot' off and the public access (whatever that is). She now just has a normal WiFi network with a key and her tablet connects to it perfectly and remember the settings. He made no effort to set up the TV side and told her she needs an aerial which his mate can install for €600!!!!!! I ran the degrouptest from their website, 37mps download (am I jealouse or what) so I fired up the decoder and it works fine. I assume it is like the Orange setup in that you only need an aerial to get local/regional TNT news and programs.

Actually as a side issue on my Orange TV I can set it 'Langue Original' (spelling) so when I watch English language programs and films I can watch them in English. I can't seem to find this setting on the SFR decoder so any tips would be helpful.

One thing I did like about the SFR router is the Admin password i.e. it is the wireless key. Seeing as I would have thought every key is different it is a bit better than Orange which is Admin and Admin which of course very few people change. Seemed a much more secure way of doing things even if it is a pain in the bum to type in all 20 odd characters every time.

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OH has an Acer 5551, don't know how great the differences might be.

Using recovery discs is probably the most stupid and cheap idea MS ever came up with and 99/100 problems can probably be solved well short of that blunt and drastic procedure.

I have never bothered with making recovery disks because once I have a machine set up exactly as I want it I make an image of it's C drive and then keep that refreshed from time to time.

Come the day disaster strikes I can be back to precisely where I was at the last image refresh and all in about 15 minutes, no frigging about getting all the updates again or having to install all my programmes from scratch etc. etc.

Once you come to understand that imaging is the ONLY reliable and guaranteed way to back up, and start to practice it, you will find that you have become all but immune from just about anything a PC can throw at you, even a complete HD failure because if you sensibly store the images off the machine you can just replace it, restore your image to it, and be back in business in no time at all.

I learnt about imaging way back in the early days of Windows 95 when I installed it on a spare PC to play with it and play I did mercilessly delving into places users shouldn't go and regularly breaking it but no problem, bang in the bootable floppy and call up the image restore function and 30 minutes later I'd be back to where I was ready to break it again.

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[quote user="Quillan"]

Yes it is on the bottom of the unit. The version of windows is home edition 64 bit. Being as the Acer version is 'tailored' by Acer (drivers etc) I don't know if the key will run with another OEM copy and of course you would loose the the ability to have a restore partition. I guess if possible I would like to put it back as it came out the box (with restore disks this time) so that if it breaks and somebody else looks at it they will see it as a standard machine. Somebody has very kindly offered me a copy and I have the key for the laptop but I will wait and see what response I get from Acer before going an alternative route. Thanks anyway.

[/quote]

You don't need the restore partition if you do a clean install of Windows 7. Once it is installed it can be backed up regularly, and just restored if need be. The Windows key you have will work no problem.

As for the drivers, every driver needed can be downloaded (from Acer or elsewhere), and it is likely that most if not all will be installed by Windows 7 anyway.

As an example, we have an Acer laptop that came with Windows 7. I purchased a key for Windows 8 (now 8.1), deleted the old Windows 7 and the Acer partition, then did a clean install of Windows 8. No problem whatsoever.

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Once you come to understand that imaging is the ONLY reliable and

guaranteed way to back up, and start to practice it, you will find that

you have become all but immune from just about anything a PC can throw

at you, even a complete HD failure because if you sensibly store the

images off the machine you can just replace it, restore your image to

it, and be back in business in no time at all.

Where do you store the image? Mine is too big for most free services..

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[quote user="AnOther"]OH has an Acer 5551, don't know how great the differences might be.

Using recovery discs is probably the most stupid and cheap idea MS ever came up with and 99/100 problems can probably be solved well short of that blunt and drastic procedure.

I have never bothered with making recovery disks because once I have a machine set up exactly as I want it I make an image of it's C drive and then keep that refreshed from time to time.

Come the day disaster strikes I can be back to precisely where I was at the last image refresh and all in about 15 minutes, no frigging about getting all the updates again or having to install all my programmes from scratch etc. etc.

Once you come to understand that imaging is the ONLY reliable and guaranteed way to back up, and start to practice it, you will find that you have become all but immune from just about anything a PC can throw at you, even a complete HD failure because if you sensibly store the images off the machine you can just replace it, restore your image to it, and be back in business in no time at all.

I learnt about imaging way back in the early days of Windows 95 when I installed it on a spare PC to play with it and play I did mercilessly delving into places users shouldn't go and regularly breaking it but no problem, bang in the bootable floppy and call up the image restore function and 30 minutes later I'd be back to where I was ready to break it again.

[/quote]

Totally agree.

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[quote user="NormanH"]Once you come to understand that imaging is the ONLY reliable and

guaranteed way to back up, and start to practice it, you will find that

you have become all but immune from just about anything a PC can throw

at you, even a complete HD failure because if you sensibly store the

images off the machine you can just replace it, restore your image to

it, and be back in business in no time at all.

Where do you store the image? Mine is too big for most free services..

[/quote]

You can use an External Hard Drive, a large USB Memory Stick, or if your system has a number of Hard Drives you can use one of them.

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Very few home users know or understand what an image is, most think it means you take a picture of your computer.

In a commercial environment imaging is used all the time, all you need to do is plug in a network cable and switch on the PC and it gets an image automatically. The most important by far is the data which this machine will now lose. You can always reload the operating system and programs but you can't put the data back. At home I have a media server which does nightly backups of all our computers mainly due to the nature of my wifes work. It is a RAID 5 server so even if the box goes bang we still have the disks. It is an old Compaq rack server with disk array running an old copy of Windows server 2003 (I had it running as a Novell server for a while). They are as cheap as chips on Ebay, ours has 3 x 1tb discs which gives us 2tb of storage more than enough. I was a Compaq Server Engineer for many years and they are very tough, resilient machines, or where till HP got their hands on them.

Anyway if a user can't even be bothered to create the recovery disks they are normally unlikely to backup their data. Hindsight is a wonderful thing after the shite has hit the fan.

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[quote user="Quillan"]

Very few home users know or understand what an image is, most think it means you take a picture of your computer.

The most important by far is the data which this machine will now lose. You can always reload the operating system and programs but you can't put the data back.[/quote]

[8-)]  The whole point of imaging is to make an image of the whole disk. This includes all data - operating system, program files and user created data. As Another says, this puts you back to exactly as it was before any problem. Including all the photos documents, etc.

This is really all that reloading the backup restore function does. The only difference is that this is an 'image' of all the disk data in the initial factory condition.

As an aside, concering the user data on this machine, assuming there is no hardware problem which is stopping proper functioning, there should be no problem to load up a Linux live CD/USB and copy any important files over to another separate hard drive. These can then be transferred over again to the reinstalled system.

It is also possible that the BSODs are caused by failing hardware - memory modules, graphic cards etc rather than corrupt software or ?virus?

EDIT In this case, you could also remove the hard drive and attach it to another computer to extract any important data. EDIT

Danny

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Danny, in a commercial environment very little data is kept on the actual PC/Laptop, it is all kept on the server. You only need an image of the base setup, just the operating system. Software like for example MS Word is installed automatically the user logs in for the first time and is controlled by the user profile. This enables the user to move to any machine anywhere in company, log in as themselves and get exactly the same applications they are entitled to use and screen. It also determines what hardware they can use  and actually 'locks' the machine so users can't install their own software. The PC/laptops only need to be plugged into the network and switched on, do disk is required to boot them, the network knows what spec the machine is and downloads the appropriate image which includes all the drivers etc the PC needs to function. The user profile when the user logs in does the rest.

To actually image every machine would be totally impracticable due to the space require on the servers and the need for various copies stored over time otherwise you can't resote deleted files etc. This is why an incremental backup system is more superior should data be stored on a PC. Even the servers are incrementally backed up with full copy only taken every two weeks or once per month.

That said with a home user and limited resourses I can see why imaging would be useful.

The machine I am trying to 'fix' has no hardware problems and all the hardware functions as it should. I have run my QuickTechPro disk on it and no errors have been reported.

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My system is set up with 3 hard disks.

  • A small 70gb disk for the operating system only
  • Two 1tb disks, partitioned for a) Programs b) Documents, c) Media and d) Backup. 

I then image the operating system, programs, documents and media weekly. Having the operating system on it's own disk solves a lot of problems, and makes the restoring of an image easier.

Should I have a problem with any of the other drives, programs, documents etc., I can extract the necessary files from the images or restore the whole image.

These days usually PCs/laptops come with one large hard disk, at least 320gb, more likely 500gb or 1tb. I would suggest partitioning the disk and making a small partition for the operating system and the rest of the disk (one or two partitions) for programs, documents etc. This way the image of the operating system can will not be too big, can be quickly made and restored (if need be).

An image restore of my operating system takes 10 minutes.

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You may find some help there but it may also be a scam or just poor quality service - hard to tell and there are many mixed reviews (for what they are worth) of Numus software which is the company behind that site. Thay have the same site for virtually every make/model of PC and many other variations too.

I don't trust any site that involves installing their "download manager" either.

Personally, I would get the disks from Acer or borrow a Win 7 DVD from someone.

Danny

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[quote user="Danny"].
Personally, I would get the disks from Acer...
Danny
[/quote]

Thats exactly what I have done and should get a reply over the next two days according to their website. This is my prefered route. To many times I have had people ask me to fix their computer and the main cause of dificulty is that they have been tinkered with by a member of the family or whatever. If I keep it bog standard then should the problem happen again and the lady takes it to another person to fix they should not have any problems if they want to reload the standard system.

Only if I can't get the disks from Acer will I consider an alternative.

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[quote user="Théière"]I would be interested to see how you get on Q, as I have inherited a 7520 laptop and could use the disks for that. I recovered over 5,000 deleted files but it would take me forever to work my way through that lot picking out the ones I need.
[/quote]

I will keep you posted then. I asked (via their website) on Friday afternoon and they say 48 hours. One assumes that working week hours.

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Well I have an answer which I will pass on to the owner and let them decide (and pay).

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Acer Technical Support.

I apologise for the delay in responding to your e-mail.

I understand your concern.

As per our records, the unit is out of warranty; however, I will do my best to provide the information.

Please be informed that, we provide recovery discs to the UK customers, if you are in UK we can send you the recovery discs. The recovery discs will charge you as £51.06

For further assistance, please do not hesitate to e-mail or contact us on 0871 760 1000 (UK), 0818 202 210 (Eire), from Monday to Friday, between 09:00 and 06:00 PM, BST.

Regards,
Anju Tiwari
Agent ID 4732
Acer Technical Support Team

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