aciidentally put another recovery disk in other laptop

Please don't flame me for this stupidity that I made.
Here's the ordeal, i have two acer laptop and i want to reformat the other one, so i booted up and put the recovery disk that I burn and get a coffee and when i come there is an error message on the screen, I thought only maybe it just the disk or something, so i just take out the disk and to my shock and stupidity is the other recovery disk for other laptop. and when i tried to boot it up again the screen is just black. and nothing happens. Is there a solution on this one or i just totally screwed up my laptop.

Help is appreciated very much

 

Find the proper recovery disk and start over.
All is not lost.

 

Yeah, just start over.

 

thanks for reply man, but the problem is the laptop wont boot up just a black screen, even the dvd slot dont open

 

anybody care for helping hand?

 

Are you sure you cannot get the drive to open? You can manually open the drive by inserting an un-bent paper clip into the hole on the drive cover. This won't fix your computer, but atleast you will get your disk back- there is a little reset-like button that releases the latch and your tray will pop open.

Something is very wrong if asbolutely nothing happens when you press the power button, and the optical drive will not open. You could try removing the battery and AC adapter and let it sit for a while, but that probably won't help.

You said that you burned this recovery disk? Could you tell us a little more about that? Have you ever updated the BIOS on your computer- could that disk have contained a BIOS image? It would be helpful to know exactly what was on that disk you burned.

 

Take out the battery pack and AC power.

Hold the button for 30 seconds or more

Try starting up again only using AC power

 

Thanks for the reply guys,

I already manually open the optical slot and put the recovery disk and power on and still nothing happen. the recovery disk is the factory default image of my laptop which i burned and recommended for reformatting the laptop and back to factory default setting. BTW this laptop is already a year old and the BIOS are updated

 

Thanks man,

I will try your suggestion and hopefully this one works

 

How did you update the BIOS? Did you do it by booting from a CD that you burned? Is there any chance that you might have used that disk by mistake just now? Can you put the disk in another computer to verify that it is the recovery disk?

Do you remember anything about the error you got? Anything you can give us about that would be helpful and possibly quite useful.

Hopefully your computer will turn on after doing what flipfire(and I) suggested. If it doesnt, I don't know what advice to offer.

 

I downloaded the BIOS from acer support site, sorry can remember the error message. that is another blunder. Hopefully the suggestion you recommended will work. thanks a lot for your reply & appreciated very much and i will later post the result if the suggestion you have said will works

 

Ok, hopefully it will work.

Just to confirm, when you press the power button nothing happens? No fans, no noise, no lights, not even the backlight on your screen? Nothing spins up?

 

the fan is running, the hd light is blinking, power and battery indicator have light, lcd panel just plain black, optical slot not working, wi-fi indicator have no light on.
thanks again man

 

Ok, that makes much more sense. Do you know what the hotkey is to enter BIOS setup for your laptop? Try tapping it after turning on your laptop to see if you can get into the BIOS. If you don't know what it is, it's probably one of either Del, F2, F10, F12, or maybe Esc. If you can get anything on the screen, let us know.

Also, you may want to manually open the optical drive and insert a bootable CD to see if it will boot from the CD if you haven't already tried that.

No problem, I love helping people at 2:00AM almost as much as I do at 4:00AM.

 

Geez, you're good-natured, smart, and must be pretty damned tired at 4am! LOL

 

It's strange, but the longer I stay awake(to a point), the more awake I become. Generally, once awake I like to say awake, and once asleep I like to stay asleep. This leads to maintaining very odd hours...

Now, about this computer that won't boot- hopefully EgoZum will have some success accessing the BIOS setup.

I forgot to mention, EgoZum, that if you do manage to get into the BIOS, you should set the optical drive to be your first boot device, save and exit the bios, turn off the laptop, insert a bootable cd, then try turning on the laptop and see what happens.

 

Thank you very much JPZ for your effort, unfortunately I'm in the office right now and don't have the laptop on me. i will be doing all the things that you mention after my work, again man thank you very much, and I think were halfway around the world BTW i'm in Hong Kong and the time is 3 PM

 

You're quite welcome. It isn't a problem, just be sure to check back once you've checked out the computer.

And yes, we are currently very far apart; It is just shy of 3AM where I live.

 

I like also like to find more info on this.
So Computer 1 is your laptop that doesn't have a problem. Computer 2 is your one you are trying to fix.

What OS are you running on Computer 1?
What OS were you fixing on Computer 2?
What was the CD of Computer 1 that you put in computer 2? (What OS)
Were you just fixing your OS of Computer 2 for no reason? Or was there a Video or driver problem, or computer problem and that is why you were using the Recovery CD?

When you turn on the power button, on the screen. Is it just black the whole time, or is there a little quick flicker of something on the screen?(less then a blink of an eye)

The Other thing I can think. (but this would be my last option) Go in your laptop and pull out the battery and leave it out for 10 mins.(talking about the little battery inside) That will reset your BIOS. (But again Last option)

Just trying to find all your options.

 

here is the situation, i just want to reformat my computer 1 but i accidentally put the wrong recovery disk which is the recovery disk of computer2, there is no problem with my computer 1 at the time of reformatting, i just want my computer 1 to set again in default factory setting. but due to my carelessness i accidentally put the recovery disk of computer 2, and there this problem begins, computer one don't boot anymore, only certain things is happening as I stated in my previous post, BTW the OS of my computer 1 is Vista home premium,
thanks for your help man, greatly appreciated.

 

Just to inform everyone, as of this moment, I already tried everything that is suggested to me a while ago to boot this computer, but to no avail. thank's for all your help but i think I'm think I'm running out of option, I will gladly appreciate any more suggestion, thanks in advance

 

That's interesting. This is the Acer in your sig, or a different one?

 

If you tried that yet. Because I have something you could maybe do.

I remember my Teacher Mr.V talking about it you don't get a screen there are still plenty of options. I can't remember them all but I do for some.

If you can (or if you no how) Try and take out your hard drive and put in another one. See if the Second Hard drive Boots up.
{This will tell you if your computer has something wrong, or if we are looking at the hard drive}

That is the only thing I could think of now, But try this. and report back.

 

Pulling the hard drive won't help; he can't even get into the BIOS. Even if the hard drive was broken he should still be able to get to the BIOS.

 

True. Was thinking a little to far out of the box.

Well I no this would be the 3 time now. But I would think reseting the BIOS would work wouldn't it.

Here is something I found

 

Ok here something new that I should have remember.
I no you just get a black screen but look or listen to your computer for a Beep or flashing Lights. You should be able to look for the problem that way.
Dell flashing lights, other company's do beeps.

and again I maybe going way way off. That'ss why i am still learning my self.

and before when I was talking about the Battery in the motherboard I ment the "cmos batterys"

I am bad with some of the computer terms.

 

the laptop that have a problem is an acer 5102, this is working properly without any glitch or whatsoever, no bsod for more than one year until i messed it up, just want to have a clean drive that all i want and this is the price i have to pay, do you think the main board is done, but why when i turn on the power the fan are still running and the hard drive is blinking, why o why, darn.

 

Ok, from a little googling it seems that the BIOS hotkey for your laptop is F2. I know it is 2AM over there now, but when you get a chance, turn on the laptop and tap F2 repeatedly for about 10-15 seconds or until you get something on the screen.

It seems there are other people with problems similar to yours; this seems to be a rather common issue with the Acer 5102. I will see if I can find more information.

I came across a post where someone claimed they could reset the BIOS by locking the laptop during post by pressing the pause key, then removing the battery and AC and waiting for half an hour.

 

finally the laptop boot but and on the screen it said the following:

windows could not start because of the following file is missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system 32\hal.dll
please reinstall a copy of the above file

then the laptop reistart so i press f2 to go to bios and change to boot to dvd/optical drive then i insert the recovery and i thought it going well because it saying checking ram disk

then suddenly a BSOD with the following
a problem is detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
fastfat.sys
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
if this the first time you've seen this error screen restart your computer, follow this steps
check make sure any new hardware or software manufacturer for any windows update
if problem persist disable or remove the newly installed hardware or software, disable the BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing
if you need to use the safe mode to remove or disable component, restart your computer. press f8 to select advance start up option and then select safe mode.

technical information:
****stop: 0x00000050 (0xF78A37AD, 0x00000000, 0xBBFA517E, 0x00000000)
****fastfat.sys- adress_BBFA517E base at BBF9F000, datestamp 42435df4

Thats its, at least i can access the BIOS, one step forward, any advise, thanks

 

Excellent! How were you able to get it to boot? Did it just start working again by itself?

The problem now is that your windows installation has become corrupt(there was an error while installing windows).

You have two options. One(I don't know if this applies to vista) is to boot from the recovery medium and try to repair the install. Your other(and better option) is to format the drive and install vista properly with the proper recovery disk.

 

it just booted by itself, but when i put the correct recovery disk,

the same bsod i got,

 

You're sure that not only the correct disk was in but also that it was booting from the disk and not your hard drive?

 

yes im sure i already change the sequence in bios to boot from disk and not the hard drive

 

it is ok if i use my friends copy of vista cd to repair it or have a clean install

 

I would highly suggest that you do a clean install. You can use your friend's disk, you just need to use the product key for your existing license.

It really sounds like your computer is still booting from the hard drive. You should not get that specific error when booting from a recovery disk. It is even more unlikely that you get the same exact BSOD when booting from the recovery disk as you do when booting from the hard drive.

 

why it seem to be booting from hard drive when i actually change it to boot from cd, what seems to be the problem

 

Perhaps it doesn't like the boot disk(or the disk is not bootable). You could put a different(known good) boot disk into the laptop to verify if boot from optical drive is functional. If it will boot from another disk, then the problem is your current boot disk.

 

oic, thanks a lot man, i try to borrowed my friend disk today and report the result,

 

Ok, good luck. Atleast your machine is bootable; to me this appears to be a software problem, which is easy to fix compared to a hardware problem.

 

Any progress?

 

Ya man I think i got it, for about 3 days of trying. and getting a BSOD when it about to finish it, its pissed me of cause every time its about on the stage of final installation the laptop will crash and it will give me a BSOD. and then this morning i said why not give it a shot again, then suddenly what the... i look at the lappy and what do you know it came back from the dead. , but unfortunately i'll have to work, i try to finish the installation of all the drivers after i'll get home and hopefully it will be ok. BTW, I made some testing if really ok, restart, shut down, turn on again and it booted just fine, sometimes i'll think machine get also some bad day hehehe.

 

Ok, that's progress. You weren't having any trouble before you tried to wipe your laptop and reinstall vista were you?

 

just like i said having trouble doing a clean install for 3 days.

 

I meant before you put the wrong disk in, way back before you started this thread.

 

OIC, Well before when i get this laptop for the first time, just for curiosity, i tried the D2D( using the FN+10 function) it works fine, and also use the recovery disk it all went fine.

 

just to let you know that my lappy is working again, and you know what is causing the BSOD, the memory ram, this is what i did, i have 2 gig memory, 1 gig each in module, i took out the other and boot the recovery disk and walla its install, and then the other memory and found out that one of the ram is already damage. it took me one week to figure out this, and one thing i learned from this, the most common cause of BSOD is ram failure, so if your lappy have gone berserk and alwys BSOD, test the ram, hope this help and BTW, i also downgraded to XP and it working find cause on my other laptop i use vista, cheers.