The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Aspire 5315. Make recovery DVDs without a DVD burner?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by bizzybody, Nov 5, 2007.

  1. bizzybody

    bizzybody Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    5
    Messages:
    72
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    16
    I picked up two of the $348 Aspire 5315-2153 laptops from the sale at Wal-Mart.

    I've already made the set of recovery CDs, and already used them to restore one that inexplicably blew itself up after installing all the latest Windows Updates and would still bluescreen after I went to safe mode and uninstalled all the updates it didn't have out of the box.

    This laptop has a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive and the disc maker can use either DVD or CD.

    What I'm wondering is if there's a way to create DVD images I can shift over my network to a PC with a DVD burner.

    The first of the recovery CDs is bootable and has the setup stuff to start the recovery. The others just have a disc ID file RCD.DAT and an Images folder with files about 52 meg each with names like C0E0A531.000, incrementing the extention number. There's also a C0E0A531.WSI of 1K and C0E0A5310000.dsi which is about 1.2 meg. Those are on CD #2, CD #3 through #8 are similar.

    Next step, figuring out how to extract a clean set of Vista Home Basic install files so I can delete the recovery partition that's almost 10 gigs. I'd like to do that after Vista SP1 is released.

    I also made the three CD apps and drivers disc set so should I want any of the stuff that came factory installed, I can put it back on.
     
    bizzybody, Nov 5, 2007
    #1
  2. Phillip

    Phillip Phillip J. Fry

    Reputations:
    1,302
    Messages:
    1,736
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Im not exactly sure of what you are asking
    if you are asking if you can make a DVD with the laptops optical drive then the answer is no, that drive is only capable of burning CDs.
    if you want to transfer files/.exes/ect, you have two options
    1. get an external DVD-Burner and do it that way
    2. get a flash drive and use it to set up a network between the laptop in question and a computer that already has a DVD-Burner.
     
    Phillip, Nov 5, 2007
    #2
  3. vbate

    vbate Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Bizzybody, might i ask how you restored the laptop. i have tried with the hidden partition and also with making 2 of the Factory Default DVD's. Nothing seems to work. I press Alt + F10 and then the laptop just sits at the "Windows is loading files..." screen. With no hard drive activity!. Any ideas?
     
    vbate, Jan 1, 2008
    #3
  4. bizzybody

    bizzybody Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    5
    Messages:
    72
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    16
    While working on another identical laptop, i boogered something up and had to use the CD set I made from mine. I just popped the first CD-R in, booted off it and restored. Took a long time restoring from CDs.

    Now I've completely wiped them both and upgraded to Vista Ultimate. Much better than Home Basic.
     
    bizzybody, Jan 2, 2008
    #4