Reinstall Vista on brother and laws computer?

His computer is an Acer Aspire E380 and had come with Vista. Looks like his son installed Linux on it for some reason? We guess it worked for him?

Any way he could not get any where on it so my wife brought it home to reload the system well it dawned on her what she was seeing when it would boot up and it had to be Linux. She has everything to reinstall it back to Vista but it will not recognize any CD or jump drive. That is about the only place you can get to when it loads is to hit F12 and pick the boot order and that is as far as you can go.

When the boot up screen comes on you see (initramfs); if you type "help" it brings up crazy words, but typing in any of them does not do anything.

Web help instructions show that alt+F10 should bring up the recovery info. Nothing happens but a blank screen when you do this.

Any guidance would be appreciated!

 

Are you having trouble booting up the Windows install media or something? What exactly happens after "hit F12 and pick the boot order"?

This post might fit the Acer forum better since technically it has nothing to do with Linux.

 

Thread moved & title changed.

 

Move it where you like. It has nothing to do with the computer NAME. It is what was done to the org or another HD. It has Linux on it I guess and the org HD was formatted and the Linux installed on it.

Wife did what I told her to try and XP was going to install but it wanted the # 1 disk and what I gave her was an upgrade pro to try.

She is now taking the Vista CD she made and making sure it is set to auto run one and with luck she can install the system back to normal. How slow it will be who knows? But with luck he can email and get on facebook and that is all he needs.

 

It is a shame when the dad and his son are not communicating and the son is that way with all the family at this point.
Like I said Acer had nothing to do with the problem at hand. My wife did manage to load a XP home on the computer and then we were able to look around. What we found out was the HD was only a 5 gig one. That computer would have came with a much bigger one like a 20 gig I suspect. So the guess is the old HD failed and his son just put one in with Linux on it.
So now to find a bigger HD and start over I guess. I wish I did know something about Linux but i don't. If I did then maybe it could go back on the computer. I will just have to ask around locally and see if I can find someone so I can see it in operation and then I would know if her brother could operate it and do what he needs to do.
If by chance any of you know of any Linux guys around New Bern NC please let me know.
Thanks

 

It's an SATA drive so I don't see how could it be 5GB - I doubt they even made such small drives when SATA was introduced.
This computer (which is not a notebook BTW so it's not the bet forum to ask) was offered with HDD of 250GB (some models might have larger or smaller capacity drives but that was the ballpark).

Check if the HDD is actually OK (SMART status) and if it's formated properly (there might be other partitions that Windows doesn't recognize). What sort of capacity is seen by BIOS?

 

As already said your problem has nothing to do with what's loaded on the hard drive, be it Linux or anything else. You are trying to get rid of it to begin with.

According to your first post your attempt to install Windows Vista on this particular machine failed at boot for some reason, and in order to help you to trouble shot the issue we need to know the procedures you've taken and the error message or other machine behavior you've seen. Your current description of the issue is not helpful.


Like downloads said the hard drive being only 5G is highly unlikely. Actually the original hard drive that came with this machine should be at least 250G according to Acer's specs. Were you referring to the system partition size by any chance?

 

I will go into bios and see what I can find out. My wife has been doing this and she knows how to reinstall a system but hell that was 10 + years ago. All I did was see what it showed on the dives. C it says is a removable one and on and on. xp was installed on I and only shows 5 gig and then H is a drive but says 0 bytes. Something is there for sure but how to get to it? If I pull the drive out then I can format the whole thing or format what I want once I connect to it.

Thanks for letting me use you guys for a sounding board. I guess it is time to also call my son.

 

Well guys this computer is a mess to my way of thinking. my wife did get XP home to load and it put it in the small I drive? The H drive had nothing and has not been formated but just take a look at how every thing is placed???? I ask her why it did not at least load it in H and she said she never saw any thing to let her? Maybe she missed something?

This compute has age but not use on it. He was not one to leave it on 24/7 and only cut it on when he needed to do something and then cut it off. So it might have less than a year of run time out of 7.

What I am thinking is just getting a windows 7 cd and pulling out the hard drive and then format it outside the computer and then put it back in and load the new system. I an my wife know more about 7 because we have one and I am an old XP guy sorry to say.

Here is some screen shots of what we found. So what do you guys think?

 

The large partition should be formatted. It's just not formatted with a file system that Windows can recognize. The Windows install media can see the partition but does not understand what's going on when it tries to read the content.

Since you're not trying to recover any data, you should nuke the entire drive. Delete the existing partitions within the install or on another computer, and then create new partitions as you like.

 

It has been years and most hard drives I added were new ones and ready to go. After I format this one do I need to have any thing installed on it so the new operating system will load? Or after I format it then what is needed will be there.

Sorry but just somthing in the back of my old head telling me something??????????

Thanks

 

Just delete existing partitions, create new ones select which to install your Windows to on the partition menu. Wait for install to finish and that's it.