Restoring 5920G

Hi, i was wondering if i could get some help as i don't know alot about computers.

I want to sell my laptop but i think it would probably be best to restore it to an as new condition first!

My first problem is when i got the laptop as new, it displayed 2 hard drives (or partitions i think) at around 100GB+ each. Now i still have the main drive (ACER C: showing 111GB) but i've lost the other. This started when my friend decided to install Linux on the laptop using GRUB, i got rid of it but it hasn't come back!

The other problem i have is, i tried to use the Acer eRecovery Management utility to "Restore system to factory default" but when i enter the password and click Ok, it simply restarts the laptop and that's it!

I'm not sure if the laptop came with any CD's as i've opened the original box and it doesn't contain any!

Thanks for any help!

 

To restore the Laptop to factory default outside windows, you need to press ALT + F10 whilst the laptop is starting on the acer screen. If this doesn't work, go into your bios and make sure D2D recovery is enabled. If it is, then what has most likely happened, is when Linux was installed, you have overwritten the ACER MBR (Master Boot Record), the Acer MBR controls the Alt+F10 recovery (D2D recovery). The only way to get this back would be to restore the system using backup disks which should have been burn't when the laptop was firist purchased. By the sounds of it you don't have these, so it is possible you have screwed the Acer Recovery feature. There are ways that people have used to recover this but they are complicated and don't always work.

To get the missing partition back on your hdd, go to control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management. You should hopefully then see a large chunk of your hdd. It should say unallocated within disk management. Right click this, click create volume (or something along these lines), then it should guide you along creating the partition. Make sure you format the partition in NTFS.

 

Ah, ok then ;(

I've got into the disk management and there's..

ACER (C 111GB NTFS Healthy (System, Boot, Page File..etc)

And there's another with no name with a size of 107GB which i guess is it (Healthy, Primary Partition).

Problem is when i right click it, all i can choose is Delete Volume and Help (When i click delete it says it was not created by Windows though i won't delete just yet).

What do you reckon i should do?

Thanks mate

 

As long as you've got nothing on there, click delete, then you should be left with unallocated space. Right click on this, then click on create simple volume, then a wizard will start. Format the partition in NTFS, and you might want to change the label from new volume to something else.

If disk managment won't let you do this, then you may need to use a third party disk managment tool such as acronis disk director, paragon or gparted.