Advice about Acer 5920G

Ok so I recently got an Acer 5920G (as the title might suggest ) and the problem I'm having is that I installed Windows Vista in Swedish, while I picked location and units in Finnish.
So the end result is that I might have a window with the title in Finnish, text in English (most apps are in english) and buttons in Swedish, which is pretty annoying

I also tried to transfer the firefox from my desktop to the 5920G with all the bookmarks and settings, the result being that no firefox what so ever works on the laptop and I'm stuck with IE (ugh).

So I want to reinstall Vista in English and get rid of all the extra craå from my C drive, how do I do that? I noticed the manual says that once you've picked a language you can't change it, certainly that can't be true? I unistalled the Acer Empowering technology bundle, including the Erecovery app, is that a problem?

Also I was somewhat disapointed to notice the puter doesn't live up to the 160Gb HD expectations, since apparently there is a 10Gb partition tucked away somewhere incase I should want all that preinstalled Acer stuff back. Is this something that's really needed or can you merge it with, say, drive D?
Can you burn this partition on DVD's?

Basically I want to get my Acer as simple, sleek, and fast as possible. Any tips on how to reach that would be much appreciated.

 

If you have a swedish version of vista, I don't think you can change it, but I think some versions of vista are multi-language (Mine is). Just reinstall it in English, and at some point it asks you which language you want. It has nothing to do with regional settings. You configure those settings later in the installation.

Before you do a clean install, make sure you made an acer recovery disk. Delete all partitions (if you don't want to keep the acer arcade quicklaunch and recovery partition (that's the 10 GB you are missing). And make your custom partitions during installation of vista. That's all there is to it.

 

actually a 160GB HDD is never 160GB, even without partitions or anything on it. I', sure wikipedia will explain it better than i do but its basically a fraud if you ask me. It's simply designed to make the capacities sound more 'rounded'.

when i had my crappy acer it didn't allow me to delete the recovery partition and it was hidden as well. but you can burn a DVD backup.............i have to warn you though. if your dvd gets damaged and recovery stops midway you are REALLY screwed. I had ended up having to use another windows disk because my recovery disk didnt work and there was no way i could burn another one since i couldnt get into windows!

 

When I first started the 5920 I could choose between a bunch of options, including languages, english included. Does that make it a multilingual version?
But if I read the manual correctly you can't change this setting once you've chosen it (something I think they could have made clear when I was choosing the language).

I don't have an Acer recovery disk. The only CD I got with the laptop is a "Windows anytime upgrade", not sure what it contains.

Btw, this doesn't seem to be stated anywhere, but is the 5920G a 64bit computer?

One more thing, there's a Bluetooth button to the left, do I have a bluetooth on my laptop?

(Don't shoot the noob )

 

You have to make that recovery disk yourself. You need 2 DVD's and a little program called Acer eRecovery. It's installed on your laptop when you first got it, and you can download it on the Acer website.

 

Ok, I'm sort of starting to get a hang of things (bear with me)

I found the eRecovery app, and the button "create factorysettings disk", just about to go buy the dvd's to be able to burn.
With these disks will I be able to restore the laptop to out-of-the-box condition no matter what happens?
Does these "factory settings disks" have the same content as the 10Gb recovery partition?

I called Acer tech suppórt and asked them that if I made a fresh install of Vista using a friends DVD and my own key would it end up being an activated copy, and they told me that the preinstalled Vista on my laptop has a different key from Vistas that you buy on a DVD from a store.

So basically my Vista is bound to this laptop and you can only install it once? (cursed be windows)

They told me that I could order some Acer english disks for 30€ but then I'd still end up with all that Acer crap.

What I want is a fresh, clean, english installed Vista, but what I'm mainly worried about here, is that somehow I end up with a Vista that's not activated, even though I indirectly paid for it with the laptop.

Should have just bought a mac..

 

Yes, when you have your recovery disks, you don't need the recovery partition anymore.
When I did a clean install of vista, I just used the serial that was on the bottom of my laptop, and it worked, but I hear stories of people also using the key on the bottom of theirs, but they end up with an unactivated copy. So it's weird.

 

I'm counting on your Baia (You shouldn't have helped me, now I won't leave you alone )

This:

is what I posted here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228

Of forgot one more thing, where the guide mentions
Disk 0 Partition 1
Disk 0 Partition 2

I only have/had
Disk 0 Partition 2
Disk 0 Partition 3 DATA
Disk 0 Partition 4 <assuming that one was the recovery partition, it was only 3gb's though.

Could the missing Partition 1 have something to do with it?

 

This is weird, it said something about my disk not fitting the criteria for windows install and that I should check if the drives controller was enabled in the BIOS settings, down in the partition window. How do I do that?

Something to that extent, not sure cause now the message has disappeared.

Help appreciated.

 

you can do a fresh install of vista with the anytime upgrade disk but you must have vista already installed

use the acer disk to restore then pop the anytime upgrade disk in then when you get to choose which partition you can do a format

and then cont to install in english

 

I don't think so. You can install windows on any partition you want. So you could install it on partition 2 if you want. Strange though that there is no partition 1. Could be that it's a hidden partition. Someone told me you could make it visible in Partition magic, but as you can't even get to windows, this is not an option

About the BIOS setting, I don't think I can help you there, because that's an error I've never seen before. Maybe it has something to do that you have to look in BIOS if you're ard drive is recognized or something, though I doubt that, cause you can still see you're partitions when you try to install windows.

Can you try to delete all partitions and make new ones during vista installation? So try to delete partition 2, 3 and 4 en create 2 new ones.