Resetting My PC

Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

You could use the popup boot menu to select the DVD at
POST time.

The BIOS should already have a boot order specified, such
as DVD first, hard drive second, and so on. If a DVD is
inserted at startup, it should be the one to boot. You could
enter the BIOS setup screen, and verify the boot order. In
case it's been changed.

This is a way to convert a DVD or ISO9660, into a bootable USB
key. But your BIOS will present the same problem, in that you
will need the popup boot menu, to start it. When the computer
starts, press the "Pause/Break" key, to get the text to stand
still. If you're lucky, somewhere on the screen it'll tell
you one F key to press to enter the BIOS, and a second Function
key provides the popup boot menu. You need to know what key
that is, to get to popup boot. On some computers, there is a
Function Lock key (for a compact keyboard), and you can't
get the function key in question to work, unless the Function lock
or equivalent is in the right state.

http://web.archive.org/web/201302152...usbdvd_dwnTool

http://web.archive.org/web/201302152...B-DVD-tool.exe

That tool works for Windows 7 and Windows 8 DVDs, and will
transfer them to a USB key. If working with a 64 bit installer
DVD, you'd want to do the preparation on a 64 bit OS computer.
As the stupid tool extracts a copy of "bootsect.exe" from
the actual media, and uses it to program the boot sector on
the USB key. I fixed that on my copy of USB DVD tool, by
sticking a copy of the 32 bit version of bootsect.exe in this folder...

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Apps\Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool

If you are having problems with the DVD itself, you could
also use a copy of Imgburn, and convert the DVD to an ISO9660
file. Either your installation DVD started life as a DVD,
or you started with a downloaded ISO9660 and made a DVD from
that. Imgburn can take the DVD and make an ISO9660 file for you.
And doing that, when the DVD is new, preserves a copy of the
DVD in case it ever gets scratched or damaged.

I haven't been keeping track, but at least some installation
media, are missing UEFI modules to be able to boot from
a UEFI BIOS. Some retail motherboards, you can select
legacy BIOS or UEFI BIOS, and that might be a way of getting
around it. For the media in question, I think people have
also managed to "borrow" UEFI support files from other media,
and rebuild the disc in question.

There are many possibilities, but as long as you have *something*
stable to start with, you'll be able to fix this. Eventually.

I hope you've been making backups... And have a safe external
hard drive to store them.

Paul

On 4/11/2014 4:07 PM, Paul wrote:
Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

You could use the popup boot menu to select the DVD at
POST time.

The BIOS should already have a boot order specified, such
as DVD first, hard drive second, and so on. If a DVD is
inserted at startup, it should be the one to boot. You could
enter the BIOS setup screen, and verify the boot order. In
case it's been changed.

Well, it didn't boot from the DVD. I'm resetting and IT IS
S....L....O....W...!!! It started at around 1PM and after 3.5 hours,
it's at 33%!!!!

Will this reinstall the OS? From where (since it will not, I've been
told, ask for the DVD)?

On 4/11/2014 1:41 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

So you want to restore to to factory condition? If so this YouTube tells
you how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjtB7846Bp8

On 4/11/2014 4:40 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:07 PM, Paul wrote:
Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

You could use the popup boot menu to select the DVD at
POST time.

The BIOS should already have a boot order specified, such
as DVD first, hard drive second, and so on. If a DVD is
inserted at startup, it should be the one to boot. You could
enter the BIOS setup screen, and verify the boot order. In
case it's been changed.

Well, it didn't boot from the DVD. I'm resetting and IT IS
S....L....O....W...!!! It started at around 1PM and after 3.5 hours,
it's at 33%!!!!

Will this reinstall the OS? From where (since it will not, I've been
told, ask for the DVD)?


The laptop has a recovery partition. That will restore it to factory
condition.

Alek Trishan wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:07 PM, Paul wrote:
Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

You could use the popup boot menu to select the DVD at
POST time.

The BIOS should already have a boot order specified, such
as DVD first, hard drive second, and so on. If a DVD is
inserted at startup, it should be the one to boot. You could
enter the BIOS setup screen, and verify the boot order. In
case it's been changed.

Well, it didn't boot from the DVD. I'm resetting and IT IS
S....L....O....W...!!! It started at around 1PM and after 3.5 hours,
it's at 33%!!!!

Will this reinstall the OS? From where (since it will not, I've been
told, ask for the DVD)?


If it is resetting, and the reset is still running, that
means it got a .wim from somewhere.

Imagine the tremendous amount of disk head movement required,
zipping back and forth from the WIM, to writing some 2KB file
on C:. Yes, it'll be slow. It would work a bit faster, if
the source and destination were on different storage devices.

*******

If you have a tablet with a small SSD inside, there's no
room for recovery items. If you got a laptop with a decent
sized hard drive, there would be a PQSERVICE or equivalent
recovery partition. Inside of that would be things like
a .wim with the OS files in it. It would be an "Acer OEM"
filled with Acer cruft, not a "clean" OEM image. But none
the less, it could be used to fix up the OS and return
the machine close to factory condition.

The PQSERVICE uses a partition type field, intended to
keep the partition invisible. That's so it will not
show up as a drive letter in your regular OS. But,
with some work, you can make it visible, if you
really want to look around.

As an example of making PQSERVICE visible, someone on a
notebook forum used Macrium to make a backup .mrimg of
the PQSERVICE partition. Then, they used the Macrium
restore - file explorer option, to look at the files
inside the backup image they'd made. Which would be a
way to look at the partition, without using PTEDIT32.

In future, if you wish to look at an MBR partitioned disk,
and examine the partition table entries, you can use PTEDIT32.
I've made changes to partition tables a few times with this.
You can use it for just reading stuff (recommended) or
for editing (not recommended unless you have a good idea
what will happen).

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...s/PTEDIT32.zip

You unzip that. Right-click the .exe and select "Run as Administrator",
since the program needs raw disk access.

The partition type fields can be edited and changed with
PTEDIT32. And that would be one potential way of causing
PQSERVICE partition to show up with a drive letter in
Windows. I'm not recommending actually doing that, but
that's an example of the power of PTEDIT32. Doing the
trick with a Macrium backup, is a "hands off" way of
gaining (indirect) access to that partition. For
example, if you had malware on the computer, perhaps
making PQSERVICE visible wouldn't be all that good an
idea. Of course, good malware could just write any part
of the disk it wanted anyway. But I'm pretending keeping
the partition hidden, makes a difference... :-)

Paul

On 4/11/2014 4:46 PM, Ron wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:40 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:07 PM, Paul wrote:
Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

You could use the popup boot menu to select the DVD at
POST time.

The BIOS should already have a boot order specified, such
as DVD first, hard drive second, and so on. If a DVD is
inserted at startup, it should be the one to boot. You could
enter the BIOS setup screen, and verify the boot order. In
case it's been changed.

Well, it didn't boot from the DVD. I'm resetting and IT IS
S....L....O....W...!!! It started at around 1PM and after 3.5 hours,
it's at 33%!!!!

Will this reinstall the OS? From where (since it will not, I've been
told, ask for the DVD)?


The laptop has a recovery partition. That will restore it to factory
condition.

How does one get there?

On 4/11/2014 4:43 PM, Ron wrote:
On 4/11/2014 1:41 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

So you want to restore to to factory condition? If so this YouTube tells
you how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjtB7846Bp8


Did I say that? I thought I said -- or at least implied -- that I wanted
to reinstall Win 8.

Factory condition for this laptop would be Win 7. :-)

On 4/11/2014 6:52 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:43 PM, Ron wrote:
On 4/11/2014 1:41 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

So you want to restore to to factory condition? If so this YouTube tells
you how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjtB7846Bp8


Did I say that? I thought I said -- or at least implied -- that I wanted
to reinstall Win 8.

Factory condition for this laptop would be Win 7. :-)

You said you wanted to reset so I thought you meant back to factory
condition. I assumed it was a Win8 PC.

On 4/11/2014 6:50 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:46 PM, Ron wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:40 PM, Alek Trishan wrote:
On 4/11/2014 4:07 PM, Paul wrote:
Alek Trishan wrote:
Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1
including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact
reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation
DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.

You could use the popup boot menu to select the DVD at
POST time.

The BIOS should already have a boot order specified, such
as DVD first, hard drive second, and so on. If a DVD is
inserted at startup, it should be the one to boot. You could
enter the BIOS setup screen, and verify the boot order. In
case it's been changed.

Well, it didn't boot from the DVD. I'm resetting and IT IS
S....L....O....W...!!! It started at around 1PM and after 3.5 hours,
it's at 33%!!!!

Will this reinstall the OS? From where (since it will not, I've been
told, ask for the DVD)?


The laptop has a recovery partition. That will restore it to factory
condition.

How does one get there?

The recovery partition would be Win7 (now that you have told me that)
and if you did a fresh install on that computer and not an upgrade it's
probably gone.

Before resetting you could try the following from a command line
running cmd as an administrator:

dism /online /cleanup-Image /restorehealth


This will often fix things that sfc /scannow seems incapable of fixing
or does not spot are awry.

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:41:05 -0400, Alek Trishan
wrote:

Since everything else failed in my attempts to upgrade to 8.1 including
attempts to repair and to refresh 8.0, I decided to "reset".

Since it does not require an installation DVD, does it in fact reinstall
the OS?

If not, how can I make this Acer Laptop boot from the installation DVD?
(It did once, when I first installed Win 8.)

Thanks.