Software, Solutions and Accessories

[ChristerC]

Trying to help à friend with a real nasty virus. The best solution would be to reinstall it and that would be fine if not the tools for doing that were missing. All Acer tools have been uninstalled of some reason.
I know the hidden partition is there, can see it and the files when booting up with Puppy Linux, and I could copy the STCDBOOT.iso to try to create a media for running the tools. But thats where my luck ends!
The iso does boot up the eRecovery Manager but it will not accept the DVD as system and I can not change media as it locks the drive.
So either there is something more than just burning that .iso that I can not do without the manager or I need to fix so that the Alt+F10 combination works.

The computer: Aspire 3680 with performs quite well except for the vital burden.

Any suggestions?

[Acer-Ryan]

It sounds like you have gone through great lengths to try and get the hidden partition to work. However, it could be some files are missing and that is why you are unable to get it to run or be identified. When you burned it as an .iso it will not run because it was not intended to be ran like that.

At this point the only suggestion I would have is purchasing recovery media from your local Acer service center or installing a retail copy of Windows if recovery media is not available for your model.

[ChristerC]

Thanks.

I know it was not intended to run that way but there is some instructions I found on your web that points to that if the keyboard combination worked you would get booted into XP (in some form) and then from there it should be possible to burn the needed recovery disks. Thats is why I used Puppy to examine the partition and it seems like its all there. All the drivers are there, the i386 library, and all the comercial stuff.... 

I found an .iso and thought that would help but it might need some parameters when burning that I do not know about. I will have one more go at it and try to just get the OS-files as I really only need to replace a couple of files to get rid of the virus itself (hopefully).

Otherwise they have to decide if they want to buy the disks. It´s a pity for the HW runs fine and I´ve always found it hard to throw away working stuff

[Acer-Ryan · Accepted solution]

I am sorry that I can't provide a better answer/option. As you are correct if some files are missing from the built-in recovery software it may explain why your burnt version may not be working because it’s missing some of the parameters to complete it. One of the reasons could be since the software is intended for this unit only, the built-in recovery software encrypts the files so the Windows software can't be pirated.