Notebooks & Netbooks

[sinistershade]

I had to run Win XP on my Aspire One 0756 for a while, so I created a USB recovery drive from the Win 8 recovery partition.

Now when I attempt to recover ("reset") to the original factory Win 8 from the USB recovery drive, the process leaves me with an unbootable netobook.

I run through the reset routine (including repartitioning the drive), and all seems fine. At the end, however, when the computer reboots, I am not given a "continue with Windows" option, as indicated in the documentation. Just the same recovery options as when I began the reset.

If I remove the USB drive and force a reboot, I get the following errors trying to boot off the restored hard drive:

  PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable

  PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.

  No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

Normally this error would suggest a hard drive problem, but if there was a problem with the hard drive, I don't think the repartition and restore to the drive would complete without errors. (I've run through the reset a numbert of times without errors until rebooting without the USB drive.) Also, the drive is seen and identified by the BIOS.

Booting from the USB recovery drive, I can get to a command prompt, from which I can see that there are files on the hard drive. Running a chkdsk on the c drive returns normal results with no errors except "Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50." The chkdsk otherwise finds no problems.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Ross

[finlux]

Hi Ross

Sometimes a failing hard drive can behave like yours! I'd suggest replacing the drive anyway, and reinstalling Windows from your USB recovery stick.

[sinistershade]

Thanks for chiming in, finlux. I may have to do that. I'm just not sure it's worth the expense to keep a cheap netbook alive.

Ross

[finlux]

Fair comment Ross, although small capacity hard drives are pretty inexpensive at the moment!

[ajay_1988]

Hi bro,

I looked at your issue and i would suggest you to once try a fresh installation with a fresh Windows CD and check if you are able to boot or not.

Lets give it a shot and try

[sinistershade]

Funny you should mention that, ajay. That's exactly what I did last night. I repartitioned and installed from a generic Win 8.1 DVD. Worked like a charm. The netbook boots fine into 8.1 off the hard drive. Of course, I won't have the hidden recovery partition, and I'll need to install some Acer-specific drivers, but it's perfectly usable. It suggests some problem with the recovery process, rather than with the hard drive.

Thanks!

Ross