No Windows Disk?

Hello all,

I realise there may have been some discussion of this subject before now, but I'm still having difficulty getting my head around the idea.

I've just bought an Acer Travelmate 7513WSMi here in the UK. I love the machine, it is everything I asked for and a fair bit more. For interests sake, I bought it from www.simplyacer.com for £476 all up, which I thought was a pretty good price.

Anyway, on to the point. When the machine arrived, I was somewhat surprised to find that it did not include a Microsoft Windows CD/DVD, meaning if I should happen to lose all contact with the hard drive, or if I should install Linux, I wasn't able to reinstall Windows should I wish to do so.

Instead, some reasearch (including some done on this excellent forum) told me that I would have to burn a DVD with the settings and operating system. Once I had done that, the impression I got was that I would then be able to restore the system back to its original state.

Is this the case?

At the moment, the hard drive has three partitions on it, one of which is unnamed and seems to be a recovery partition. The other two are the c: and d: drives.

I would like to install Linux onto this machien in a dual boot configuration, but I am worried that I won't be able to restore it back to its default configuration afterwards, without having to resort to the somewhat ridiculous measures of buying another Vista licence when I already have a perfectly good one.

The machine did come with a 'Windows Upgrade' DVD which I'm told includes a full install of Vista, but only works if there is a remnant of another Microsoft XP OS on it. Is that the case or are there ways around this? I don't want to have to plump for another licence when I already have one and I'd prefer not to have to muck around pirating something I have a legal right to use.

Alan

 

The dvds you burned are simply an image of your hard drive. If the OS should becomes corrupt, or you want to go back Windows, you can just reimage the drive from the dvds and your machine will be exactly like it came from the factory.

 

Adinu, thanks very much for your reply,

These are the DVDs I burned using the Acer eRecovery 'Burn Factory Default Disk' yes?

So I can muck around with partitions and so on without fear of losing Vista (providing I don't kill the HD of course)?

Alan

 

You can even install a whole new hard drive and still be able to use those dvds to restore your OS.

I have long replaced the hd in my Aspire 5102 and restored the original OS several times.

So yes, you can muck around with the partitions, even kill the hd.

 

Okay, few provisions here...

What you have is nominally a machine with a recovery partition (the un-named one) a C drive (your OS) and a D Drive (nominally user Data).

YOur backup DVD that you burned will 99% likely just restore the C drive.

IF (and only if) you haven't messed with partitions, if you HAVE messed with partitions, then it may be a bit funny, depending on what you've done.

Personally I've found the easiest way is put machine back to fresh is remove all partitions from the disk, and then use the recovery DVD, which brings it back with a single partition that is the C drive now. NOTE: This method loses you the recovery partition.

I am not sure if any of the DVD's will restore it to really factory fresh (with recovery partitions, and the D drive), maybe it will, but most I've seen don't!

 

At least from my experience, the recovery dvd does re-create the 3 partitions (c, d, and the recovery one) even tho my hd was 1 single partition when I restored it.

 

Interesting, they must have changed it for some PC's.

I guess it's a warning then, it MAY create all three, it may not.

 

Thank you very much people, you have reassured me a lot.

I'm not usually this timid with my computers - I have five or six of them at the moment with different flavours of Windows and Linux on them, but this is the first time I have ever had a brand new computer ever and I don't want to put a scratch on my shiny new toy.

Knowing I can muck around with it and restore the original OS is a big relief. Whether it restores all three partitions doesn't really bother me tbh, since I most probably will end up deleting the recovery partition regardless of what it does. Why have large capacity backup capability (DVDs) if I am just going to take up space on the hard drive? Whats the point? If my HD dies the backup partition won't help me. I appreciate it might if I just lose the OS, but I would prefer to have a clean install then anyway.

/me looks around for his Debian netinst disk.

Thanks again,

Alan

 

hi awrowe,

Do not install linux in you laptop, for linux grub will overwrite the the vista bootloader and the acer bootloader, I know this for I bought a new laptop aspire 5520, and I did made the recovery disks and then I installed UBUNTU linux after this I could not start windos vista. All the partitions were the intact
and recovery dvd and hiden partition did not work... well it work... after using fdisk and makeing this partition active but after the restoration vista could not start on the screen there was this message "operating system missing".

What I did was take the computer to the store for It was between the 15 days period garanty and they exchanged for a new one, I was lucky.

So, before installing Linux get more information of how to restore the vista bootloader and the acer boot loader becouse linux GRUB will overwrite them.

If you have a Vista install disk you can fix it but if you dont you will lost the vista that came with you computer.

I'm trying to find a way to install linux without loosing the vista that came with the laptop if I succeed installing it with out messing the vista bootloader and the acer bootloader I will post in this forum.

Sorry for my poor English.