Recovery Partition Not Detected.

[Senoska]

I have an Acer; that being said they don't give recovery CDs, Instead they give you a hidden recovery partition.

So this is my problem:
I thought I was being witty and had an extra XP CD laying around and decided that I wanted to dual boot Vista and Xp. If course thinking microsoft was smarter than dirt (first mistake, I guess.) I had assumed it wouldn't have fucked over my boot settings, I was wrong. So yea, it fucked over my boot settings and would only detect XP. I had downloaded a program called VistaBootPro and it reinstalled the vista boot settings, how ever it didn't reinstate my recovery partition data in the settings. Now I need to reformat my PC and I can't get it to work.

Any ideas?

[Norellicus]

fdisk, delete all partitions, start over?

[Senoska]

fdisk, delete all partitions, start over?

Not an option. I just need to add the recovery partition back to the boot(.ini? I dont know where the fuck that went, vista sux etc.) file, right?

The hidden partition:
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/4497/drivexx6.jpg

[Norellicus]

I'm not sure I see why; you already said it's all fucked up and you're attempting to start over, yes?

If it's because you want the apps/drivers/etc back from your base install, you can almost always get those from mfr's website.

Edit: Oh I see. I'm not sure about that, most cases where I've used recovery partitions they haven't been bootable or accessible by any boot.ini process, had to use some special boot disk to unlock it. :/

[Cephius]

Right click my computer, click manage, go into the disk management. See if you can see your recovery partition there and assign it a drive letter if so.

[Senoska]

Right click my computer, click manage, go into the disk management. See if you can see your recovery partition there and assign it a drive letter if so.

Can't do it. Can't right click on it. All I get is "Help". Unless there is another way of assigning partitions a drive letter.

I went to google and checked before posting here and someone had said that acer designates their recovery partitions "x".

This was what I was told to do (Of course it didn't work.)

Reboot in command line

get the the root (cd\) and then:
mbrwrwin boot hdo

It said mbrwrwin was not found.

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/1086/recoveryaq6.jpg

[Zigma]

start -> run -> msconfig -> boot

[Cephius]

That's really stupid, they should just give you a Vista reinstallation CD for situations like this where Vista refuses to recognize the recovery partition...

Worst case scenario, write down your Vista key, download a reinstallation CD, use it to format and reinstall, and use your key to activate.

[Senoska]

That's really stupid, they should just give you a Vista reinstallation CD for situations like this where Vista refuses to recognize the recovery partition...

Worst case scenario, write down your Vista key, download a reinstallation CD, use it to format and reinstall, and use your key to activate.

Again, that's not an option.

[Isiolia]

That's really stupid, they should just give you a Vista reinstallation CD for situations like this where Vista refuses to recognize the recovery partition...

Acer's I've dealt with had a program to burn a recovery DVD set from that partition, in case something should happen to it. I've seen some companies also offer to sell the recovery disc sets, but I guess they aren't...

Does it have to be initiated from the boot.ini menu? There's not another "hit Fxx to begin recovery process" or something?

[Senoska]

That's really stupid, they should just give you a Vista reinstallation CD for situations like this where Vista refuses to recognize the recovery partition...

Acer's I've dealt with had a program to burn a recovery DVD set from that partition, in case something should happen to it. I've seen some companies also offer to sell the recovery disc sets, but I guess they aren't...

Does it have to be initiated from the boot.ini menu? There's not another "hit Fxx to begin recovery process" or something?

That's the problem, it's not reading it when I hit the keys. Recovery key on acer seems to be ALT+F10. And I've done it before so I know it worked. Now it's not giving me the option. I went into the system recovery mode before windows starts and it had a little button to return to factory defaults but its saying no recovery partition was found:

No valid locations could be found.
Windows cannot find a backup on the hard disc or DvDs on this computer. Attach the correct harddisk or insert a backup dvd.

[Senoska]

What happend is when I installed XP I overwrote the Acer MBR. I have no fucking idea on how to recover this or how to fix it. Any ideas would be great.

[Shuemue]

ultimatebootcd has this utility (among many others) http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/mbrtool.htm

Might be helpful

[Senoska]

ultimatebootcd has this utility (among many others) http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/mbrtool.htm

Might be helpful

Doesn't this just back up the mbr? Meaning im SOL? I went and bought 2 packs of CDs to try and burn the thing from the acer erecovery, if it doesnt work I guess I gotta fdisk and install XP....

[Shuemue]

That thing I linked claimed it had a MBR editor too, but it's kinda beyond my comfort zone, so I'll just say fdisk like everyone else.