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I have an Acer 5004 WLMi laptop and the hard drive is failing, or, has already failed as of tonight, based of the screeching noise it was making. I have a brand new W.D. 250GB to replace it with.
Problem is, the way I understand Acer to work, the actual recovery data is on a hidden partition on the old drive, which is accessed by pressing Alt+F10, or running the Recovery disc. I've tried running the Recovery disc, but it is not bootable, I can't use it to reinstall Windows XP.
I have the CD Key right on the bottom of the laptop. I actually bought a pair of IDE laptop adapters so that I could hook them up to my desktop and hopefully clone the old drive to the new one to copy the hidden partition, but I think my old drive is beyond that point.
Acer wants $130 for 90 minutes of tech support. I could buy another copy of Windows for cheaper than that.
Frustrated, don't know what to do...
I don't know if there are downloadable OEM .ISO's out there which I can use my own CD key for. I tried using my CD key with my retail disc but of course that didn't work. I'm not trying to get around the system; I'm just trying to get my laptop working again.
Thanks.
- Dave
Problem is, the way I understand Acer to work, the actual recovery data is on a hidden partition on the old drive, which is accessed by pressing Alt+F10, or running the Recovery disc. I've tried running the Recovery disc, but it is not bootable, I can't use it to reinstall Windows XP.
I have the CD Key right on the bottom of the laptop. I actually bought a pair of IDE laptop adapters so that I could hook them up to my desktop and hopefully clone the old drive to the new one to copy the hidden partition, but I think my old drive is beyond that point.
Acer wants $130 for 90 minutes of tech support. I could buy another copy of Windows for cheaper than that.
Frustrated, don't know what to do...
I don't know if there are downloadable OEM .ISO's out there which I can use my own CD key for. I tried using my CD key with my retail disc but of course that didn't work. I'm not trying to get around the system; I'm just trying to get my laptop working again.
Thanks.
- Dave