Notebooks & Netbooks

[baldbarn]

The hard drive on my 5742z completely failed. I could not recover using the recovery discs because they could not access the hard drive. Finally, my only recourse was to buy an OEM version of windows 7 home premium, take out the old garbage drive and install a new samsung 840Pro 256GB SSB. Everything is working fine with the new clean installation except the dedicated keys on the keyboard don't work (example: Fn-F3 which enables WiFi). I assume that is because none of the original acer software is present. Is there any way I can still enable those dedicated keys? Would it be possible to use any of the original recovery discs to do it without lousing up my clean installation of windows 7?

I included the above as background for my new problem.

I need to reinstall the crystal eye webcam on the above laptop. It is in my device manager showing as working normally, however, it is not showing in my control panel as being installed and therefore, I can't access it. Can some kind soul help me out on this? I was very fortunate and grateful for the prompt help in solving my earlier WiFi problem.

[finlux · Accepted solution]

Hi baldbarn

The recovery disks do not need the hard drive to install. They are a complete full installation of Windows for your particular laptop that contains all the correct drivers & applications.

However, as you've already installed Windows 7 on your machine, go to Acer support for your region and click on "Drivers & Manuals". Next select your model, and your OS. All drivers and Applications are there for you to download - just click on the "Drivers" and "Applications" tabs.

Hope this helps!