Need help editing PQSERVICE

[Richard Scott]

Hello everyone, I need help with the PQSERVICE. I have an Acer Aspire 4330. Which really doesn't matter. The problem I am having is that, I wiped the HDD clean through cmd. Then I installed windows 7 on it. Now I want it back on there.Now I know you can't get the original PQSERVICE back. BUT I found that I can do a HDD clone from my wife's laptop with the PQSERVICE to a fresh HDD. I put the HDD in my Acer and do the Alt+F10 and the PQSERVICE works just fine. BUT, her laptop is a Gateway, so when I do the recovery on my Acer, naturally, all of the Gateway drivers, software, and everything is on the Acer.
What I am trying to figure out is, there has got to be a way to xcopy the Acer recovery disks on to the PQSERVICE's partition. Well that is the jist of it. If anyone can help with this, it would be appreciated alot. Thank you.

 

[gbhall]

If I read you right, what you want to do is recover the Acer Aspire to factory condition, presumably with XP. I am not familiar with PQservice, but it typically would be a hidden partition on the HDD which is called up by a function key at boot time. It should likely still be there, as the partition would not be disturbed under normal circumstances (even installing another OS). On the face of it, to restore the OS from another PC is illegal, although one can understand and sympathise with you.

There is no real problem if you have an OS cloned from a somewhat similar PC, to just installing the correct drivers for the Acer, once downloaded from Acer support site.

However, as far as MS is concerned, your Gateway clone on the Acer wouold be an illegal install, and you will find that MS update will not work. You would need to re-register the OS with the original Acer registration stuck to the case. Even then, I have my doubts it would work.

I think you should approach Acer and ask them for advice, explaining the exact situation as to why you want to restore the PC to factory condition. No need to muddy the waters about your wife's gateway. If it was Dell, for instance, they might even send you an install disk fro the original PC.......Acer, I don't know.

 

[Richard Scott]

Well to start out, I did not know that it was illegal to do that all I want to do is get the pqservice back on my laptop just to see if I could do it. I do not plan to sell the laptop. It is running windows vista not xp. I am not muddying the water when I say it is my wife's laptop. It is my wife's laptop. I have no reason to lie about it. All I was doing was experminting that's all. To say the least it didn't work. So I will stop everything before it gets out of control. Like I say I didn't know that was illegal to do that. So thanks for the advice and good day.

 

[gbhall]

I'm not trying to alarm you It is just a turn of phrase. An illegal install from MS point of view is one not sold for that particular PC. In other words, if you bought an empty PC, but cloned onto it an OS from another PC. Then unless that other PC is yours already, and is then scrapped, you have two PCs with the same registration number...... that's what it would look like. MS would not immediately do anything about that, it simply causes MS update to fail, along with a lot of moaning. For why, see below.

As to your wife's PC being cloned, I merely meant that when asking Acer how to restore your PC to factory condition, it is not at all relevant what you have tried to do so far. Just ask them how do I do it 'when I have over-written the HDD with some other stuff'.

In actual fact, provided your wife's clone and your original Acer were exactly the same version of Windows, what you did would be ok, but it would not work from the off because the driver software for the hardware is very different, and also problems would arise when Windows update tried to examine your PC for the hardware it is on, and finds it is not a Gateway (the OS encodes your hardware for MS to know if the OS is still on the original PC, and that encoding would naturally be on your PC too, and lo, it would not match !)

Expert assistance would be able to clone the PC, substitute the correct Acer drivers, then re-register with your original Acer number, and all would be well. But easier for you if you can just persuade Acer to help you restore to factory condition, which is what I recommend you to do.