I just finally bought a new computer....straight off the shelf (literally)....i didn't even have to install windows....so i ask the chick at the store (and she seemed pretty clued in on this) if it would be worth doing a system restore on this before i start pilling juck onto it....and she said 'it would be a good idea'...she also said that 'acer...if i can remember correctly...that when you go to nuke the hard drive that it shouldn't delete vista....it will keep everything you need to re-install vista' So the point is that i didn't get a vista cd/dvd whatever And before i go to nuke the computer i would like to know if windows will not be deleted.... because i dont won't to rush in and wipe the hard drive.....with no means of re-installing windows.... p.s. this might be in wrong section...i wasn't sure where to put it.... any advice would be greatly appreciated
everyone knows that when u format a hard drive it wipes everything off including a OS, ive never seen a OS stay on a hard drive after its been formated
Acer like many brand named computers have a partitioned hard drive with the OS locked on a protected partition... pretty much its safe to do so. i reformatted both my acer laptops only recently via this with no probs mate.
A "system restore" is an image of your programs/settings that you can revert back to in case you screw something up - what's this discussion of now reinstalling the O/S? If you just bought the computer, you shouldn't need to do a complete reformat ...
Zaf and IDip are right on. Very few computers these days come with the restore/recovery disc. For example, a few companies that include them now are Toshiba and Gateway/Emachines (they only come with the OS disc, drivers & apps still need to be burned). As mentioned above, the others have a recovery partition that is to be used to do the restore. When you do the restore, it will reinstall Windows and basically reset the computer back to factory settings. The recovery wizard for some companies, such as HP will give you an option to have the wizard backup everything before the restore process, but to play it safe, assume you will loose your data, so it needs to be backed up before proceeding. Since it is very possible that your HD may go bad eventually, the first thing you should do is make the recovery discs. In your case, since you have an acer, go to the Acer eRecovery Manager, and click the Recovery Disc creation option, and make it from there. Most acers will burn the recovery disc on 2 DVDs. When you go to the eRecoery option, it will ask you to setup a password, make sure you don't forget this password, because you will need it if you have to use the onboard partition. If you need to access the onboard restore partition on your acer, restart the computer and hit ALT + F10 when your computer is starting up. Why they chose such a strange combination like ALT + F10 is beyond me...The standard for accessing this onboard recovery is either F10 or F11, so it's a bit strange...
Indeed this is true, I have over 100 PC's at work (just over a year old) that have a bootable restore partition on them, you gotta press some key combination to get acess to it, but I can't remember what it is!
yes...i did realise that there was another partition on the hard drive....(but wasn't exactly sure what it was) the reason that i have to format is because....as i said when the company (bing lee) installed windows....they installed a crap load of other stuff aswell....so i figure a format....would be a good idea anyway....thanks for the info....cause i was really clueless on this.... Thanks Fella's
Sorry about bumping this topic but i really need to know does Acer's protected hardrive stay alive after i repartitioning because i cant seem to get into the boot thing
"Hello, I have the same problem, and I am not able to solve it...." Is what he said, posting in English will make everything a whole lot easier.
Working in an electronics store, I have some experience with Acer / HP / Zepto and their backup. Zepto comes with a restore disc For Acer, when you do a restore, it dosen't remove the protected files from which it reloads Win. But other programs can have deleted some of them. What I did not long ago, was to create the recovery discs, and then use the eRecovery option inside Windows. Just don't do any formating, as the recovery should do that by itselfs in a safe way to ensure the integrity of the recovery files.
