I could be wrong about this part, as i have only owned one acer and that was a little over a year ago and i gave it to a friend. But as far as far as my knolwedge goes i dont know much about the recovery partition, that may be something you have to call acer about and explain your situation.. if your warranty is still in effect i can almost guarantee they will fix the problem ,or send you a new disc that doesnt require the use of the partition as well. But dont lose hope! even if not, or if you do not want to go this route you have more options. These other options are the way i always go, and if you have a valid xp pro product key, it would probably be the easiest. one option is to see if anybody you know has a windows setup disc, that is not from a manufacturer, it is a microsoft disc, or you can go online, and search for one on your own, and download it and burn it to a disc. for that you will most likely need a torrent application, that being the easiest way to download larger files. and search for " Windows XP Pro bootable ISO" or something of that sort, just make sure that what you come up with is between 500 and 800 MB, and that it is an iso file, and is bootable. then all you need is an iso burner. once the file is downloaded and you have the iso burner app installed, all you do is double click the xp iso file, and click burn. the repeat the normal process of installing windows, make sure if you do it this way, you delete all partitions and go from there.