Ididmyc600
Posts: 1,309 +5
Hi
A while back i was given an Acer 5315 laptop, the HDD was busted good and wouldnt even read under USB to SATA adaptor.
replacing the drive was easy enough, like most laptops the drive is in a really accessible place.
Not being a lover of Vista i decided to install XP on it, now as you know XP install disk dont have native SATA drivers and wont see a SATA drive without loading extra drivers during the install routine.
Not being sure which drivers were needed i did a google on the subject and came across this site here...SoulPass.
Its a really good guide and with a little care and time anyone can use the site to install XP on almost any of the acer range.
So for a long time now ive been running XP and am quite happy with it.
But back to my title and the reason why im writing this post.
The time has come to sell the laptop, like most im always looking to upgrade and i decided that it would sell better if i had Vista on it as this was how it came originally, and have the acer restore method as mentioned in the blurb
But of course the original drive that had the recovery partition on it was gone long ago and with it any chance of restoring the laptop to its original condition.
So i did a google and found the disks, but they were costing anywhere from £50 onwards.
However i found a seller on Ebay that had the disks for just £5, so i ordered them.
The disks arrived and so did the 80GB drive i had ordered.
Seems simple enough, put the drive in pop in the first disk and let it do its job.....
Nope
Just as soon as the install started it errrored out with a "type mismatch"...
A quick google later and it seems that the drive has to be formatted with NTFS, seems a bit strange when its installing Vista and Vista uses NTFS....
Ok so i formatted the drive using a USB to SATA adaptor and tried again,...
Succcess... the install carried on where it had previously errored and all seemed ok, it asked me for disk 2 and finished its job...
Then it popped disk 2 out and stated "insert backup disk1 or system disk and press ok".
hang on i dont have a backup disk, or a system disk...oh heck i thought (bear in mind i had been at this for 3 hours now) now what am i supposed to do...
On a whim i stuck disk 1 back in and pressed ok, and was greeted with "copying files please wait" and then " finished please click ok to restart"
bet your thinking like me, oh well that seemed easy enough...
Wrong.......
the laptop restarted and came up with "missing operating system"....
So back to google i went and after searching many pages ( and i mean many pages) most relating to people who had the restore partition on the HDD as opposed to on disks like me, i came to an end still none the wiser.
Some sites suggested using PTEDIT to adjust the drive to be bootable, being familiar with this i tried and failed, the drive was marked as "80" and therefore should have been bootable.
I had another acer netboot and used mbrsaver to copy the MBR onto the laptop, still no joy it still wouldnt boot.
6 hours later and im just about ready to throw everything out of the window.
When i had a brainwave, its not often at my age but i thought it might be worth a try, why not start with a drive that already boots....
I started up the laptop and booted with a copy of windows 98, i fdisked and formatted the drive with the /s command to copy the system files and once it was done i checked it booted ok.
I then linked it to XP via the USB to SATA adaptor and formatted the disk with NTFS.
The i restarted the restore process.....
30 minutes later i hit the part where it had to restart, i crossed my fingers and toes and eyes and clicked ok.
the laptop screen faded to black and then posted and went to a black screen.....and then started to install vista...
Woohoooo it was working....Vista started installing i got the desktop up and the preinstall routine went through, settling down after 10 minutes to a clean tidy desktop.
From start to finish i spent about 8 hours im writing this so you dont have to...
Im assuming that if you were using the original drive then you wouldnt have to go through all of this, however if your planning on changing your drive for a larger one or just replacing a failed drive then i hope you read this first.
A while back i was given an Acer 5315 laptop, the HDD was busted good and wouldnt even read under USB to SATA adaptor.
replacing the drive was easy enough, like most laptops the drive is in a really accessible place.
Not being a lover of Vista i decided to install XP on it, now as you know XP install disk dont have native SATA drivers and wont see a SATA drive without loading extra drivers during the install routine.
Not being sure which drivers were needed i did a google on the subject and came across this site here...SoulPass.
Its a really good guide and with a little care and time anyone can use the site to install XP on almost any of the acer range.
So for a long time now ive been running XP and am quite happy with it.
But back to my title and the reason why im writing this post.
The time has come to sell the laptop, like most im always looking to upgrade and i decided that it would sell better if i had Vista on it as this was how it came originally, and have the acer restore method as mentioned in the blurb
But of course the original drive that had the recovery partition on it was gone long ago and with it any chance of restoring the laptop to its original condition.
So i did a google and found the disks, but they were costing anywhere from £50 onwards.
However i found a seller on Ebay that had the disks for just £5, so i ordered them.
The disks arrived and so did the 80GB drive i had ordered.
Seems simple enough, put the drive in pop in the first disk and let it do its job.....
Nope
Just as soon as the install started it errrored out with a "type mismatch"...
A quick google later and it seems that the drive has to be formatted with NTFS, seems a bit strange when its installing Vista and Vista uses NTFS....
Ok so i formatted the drive using a USB to SATA adaptor and tried again,...
Succcess... the install carried on where it had previously errored and all seemed ok, it asked me for disk 2 and finished its job...
Then it popped disk 2 out and stated "insert backup disk1 or system disk and press ok".
hang on i dont have a backup disk, or a system disk...oh heck i thought (bear in mind i had been at this for 3 hours now) now what am i supposed to do...
On a whim i stuck disk 1 back in and pressed ok, and was greeted with "copying files please wait" and then " finished please click ok to restart"
bet your thinking like me, oh well that seemed easy enough...
Wrong.......
the laptop restarted and came up with "missing operating system"....
So back to google i went and after searching many pages ( and i mean many pages) most relating to people who had the restore partition on the HDD as opposed to on disks like me, i came to an end still none the wiser.
Some sites suggested using PTEDIT to adjust the drive to be bootable, being familiar with this i tried and failed, the drive was marked as "80" and therefore should have been bootable.
I had another acer netboot and used mbrsaver to copy the MBR onto the laptop, still no joy it still wouldnt boot.
6 hours later and im just about ready to throw everything out of the window.
When i had a brainwave, its not often at my age but i thought it might be worth a try, why not start with a drive that already boots....
I started up the laptop and booted with a copy of windows 98, i fdisked and formatted the drive with the /s command to copy the system files and once it was done i checked it booted ok.
I then linked it to XP via the USB to SATA adaptor and formatted the disk with NTFS.
The i restarted the restore process.....
30 minutes later i hit the part where it had to restart, i crossed my fingers and toes and eyes and clicked ok.
the laptop screen faded to black and then posted and went to a black screen.....and then started to install vista...
Woohoooo it was working....Vista started installing i got the desktop up and the preinstall routine went through, settling down after 10 minutes to a clean tidy desktop.
From start to finish i spent about 8 hours im writing this so you dont have to...
Im assuming that if you were using the original drive then you wouldnt have to go through all of this, however if your planning on changing your drive for a larger one or just replacing a failed drive then i hope you read this first.
