Acer Aspire 5920 laptop, cannot invoke Alt...

Feb 16, 2008

- OK, thanks for finding all the utilities and providing such good details.

First, let me brief you on how things appear, right now:

Since you have been running this system, and booting several times, the internal windows "repair" and "restore" function would be useless. Those only fix problems with the existing OS -or restore the same OS from the last known good boot configuration. So the MS F6/F8 options are a waste of time.

Now, as for the OEM Acer "restore", that must be done when booted from a separate OS container from the target directory (your 180gb C drive). To restore THAT c drive, you must start on some other partition or media. Normally, this is built in, and the restore partition, which has a small DOS-like OS, boots when you invoke Alt-F10. The fact that this option does not exist anymore is almost certain to be due to someone replacing/upgrading the previous OS with a boot-able Windows CD installer, then leaving the old restore partition without upgrading that too.. For example, if the laptop originally came with XP, and the previous owner upgraded to Vista, but failed to choose a backup (make an auto restore). Now, there is a possibility you can still restore the previous OS, but at best, you can only restore whatever OS was installed previously (which may be some XP version).

Now, for the current situation. Unfortunately, both the 9gb partition and the 4gb partition are big enough to be a restore partition. So this is not quite clear yet. Please be patient, I need to send you back to do the same thing again, and be VERY sure that the 4gb partition is not 4mb instead! It is unusual to have TWO hidden partitions so large, unless one of them is Linux (which must "hide" from Microsoft OS, since MS is a predatory OS). If the partition you think is 4 GIGAbytes, is actually 4 MEGAbytes, then this makes better sense, because it is most likely a standard NTFS directory partition (they are usually 4-8mb). MS usually makes this 4-8mb partition on a new install. So if you find that one is only 4mb, then we have ONLY one possible restore partition (the 9gb). We have to be absolutely sure. So go look and get back to me. Remember, if the utility lists sizes in "GB" then your data is presumably correct. However, if it lists sizes in MB, then 4gb would be 4,000mb. But the much smaller container, of only 4mb would be listed as 4,000kb or 4,000,000bytes. If this was the case, then we can assume the 9gb is the ONLY possible restore partition. So please go look again and verify this.

Feb 17, 2008

- Aha! Now I see what has happened here. You were playing around with the restore partition, trying to run things manually, from C drive instead of boot time? You absolutely cannot do that! You must be running on a different partition, in order to restore the main/active partition. If that is what you have done, the rest of this reply applies.

You cannot "get there from here", and just trying that once, will corrupt the entire process. This is because the executable you are trying to run is a MBR restore. That is "master boot record", the "street map" your computer uses to find the operating system's location on the hard drive. This is really critical stuff. And you were trying to "restore" an operating system that has already been replaced! So the old master boot record (what you did install) is now pointing to the old location of the OS before it was replaced! (and it no longer exists there) If the 4gb container (you never answered me!) was actually 4gb instead of 4mb, then the original setup was probably something like this:

Windows XP on 4gb partition HD0/0 (c drive)
Windows Vista on 9gb partition HD0/1 (d drive)
and a huge 128gb "black hole hard drive" (e drive) for movies/MP3s, etc.

This is typical dual-boot system most experts will use on a laptop like yours since many laptop features do not work yet on Vista, so they want to be able to fall back to XP for missing functions/features and hardware compatibility. Thus when the laptop was started, boot.ini threw up a "menu list" with XP and Vista offered as a choice (up arrow/down arrow and/or enter). Now, somehow, you have the OS installed on that biggest container (128gb) now. That is "upside down" from most logical setups, since you want the OS on the smaller drive, since accessing a smaller directory makes the OS run MUCH faster than when it resides in a large partition. Anyway, I am 99% sure of this, your MBR is now unrecoverable, and therefore, when the restore partition restarts, it never finishes, because the OS is not where it is supposed to be (where it was originally, on either 9gb or the 4gb drive). What does all this mean? Unless you have a REALLY good geek there near you, who has an external USB laptop hard drive container, you are screwed. You will never fix this! Believe me, the restore is never going to finish (or succeed), whatever remnant OS you are able to load now is incomplete, missing lots of functionality, and you will always be missing the use of some hidden partitions! I do not see any way out of this, except to get a XP CD installer (which is where you need to start, load it on 4gb). Get Vista loaded later as a second option, on 9gb, and keep the 128 for storing all documents and multimedia. All three drives should be formatted (erased) with the XP CD before loading XP. The latter is important, since the restore is invalid, and will otherwise always be booting (but never completing) if the primary OS is disrupted. XP CD installers are VERY cheap now, since (idiots) consider XP to be "outdated" or Vista to be an improvement. You will see what I mean, when Vista is incapable of using many laptop features you have, and worse, many features disappear after suspend/hibernate (a common unresolved problem with laptop Vista installs, requiring a reboot after sleep to regain functions). If this were not true, MS would not have "backtracked" and released a new 64-bit XP after releasing Vista! Consumers demanded laptops work. So obviously, if you have a dual core or some other 64 bit processor, get the appropriate 64bit XP CD. You can worry about Vista after you get the laptop running properly, without those invalid ghost partitions.