How to SUCCESSFULLY restore a W510 from a flash drive

I spent the last few hours trying to find out how to restore from a flash drive but all the posts I found were either incomplete or were using an DVD drive. Since I just figured it out myself with some trial and error I wanted to post on here so others don't have to get stuck like I was.

It's actually pretty simple:

1) Copy BOTH the "System" AND "Recovery DVD 1 of 1" to the SAME flash drive.

2) Go in to the BIOS/UEFI and set the USB port to boot before the HDD. I think it was labeled as USB - HDD but I can't remember the exact label.

3) Restart your W510 and it should bring you to the Acer restore utility.

4) Follow the prompts and you'll be all set.

Without putting both discs on the same flash drive the restore utility wouldn't recognize another drive plugged in either the recovery files copied on to it. From what I was seeing, this was a hurdle many people were hitting.

EDIT 1/14/13

Sorry about that guys, I got ahead of myself because I wanted to get this up as soon as possible last Friday.

After my step 4, the install will ask for you to insert the System disc eventhough it is still on the flash drive. What I found to work was just turning the tablet off and then restarting it. There is one caveat, though. By ending the setup you won't have any touch functionality. The way I got all the drivers back was by downloading the driver pack found on the support page and running the included executable.

My apologies again for being hasty in my posting.

Accepted answers

All comments

padgett

Make sure the flash drive is FAT32 and not NTFS.

SasaK

Afer complited 99% of files it stop with request - insert disc 2 of 2.

Tryed from external CD, from HDD USB, also inserted files from Disc 2 to USB stick which contains System DVD and Restore DVD disc 1 of 2 - nothing worked .... any solution?

padgett

There should be an installation log file. Need to see what file it was looking for (should be one of the last lines). See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824819.aspx

ic3cool

having the same trouble!

any one found out what to do to get this working ?

ijake

SasaK wrote:
Afer complited 99% of files it stop with request - insert disc 2 of 2.

Tryed from external CD, from HDD USB, also inserted files from Disc 2 to USB stick which contains System DVD and Restore DVD disc 1 of 2 - nothing worked .... any solution?

See my post for the solution. Hope it helps Smiley Happy

http://community.acer.com/t5/Tablets/Restore-W510-from-a-flash-drive-for-whom-has-two-Recovery-DVDs/m-p/94233#U94233

pranavsharma

Thanks to this guy he saved me some good money...and i would like to share my experience with everyone as well

So this is what i did

1) I got 3 disks with my tablet (SYSTEM DVD, RECOVERY DVD, RECOVERY DVD ENGLISH LANGUAGE PACK), i copied all the files from the 3 disks into the root of my blank formatted flash drive(No separate folders for each disk, just files).

2) I changed the supervisor password by going into the bios (enter into bios? shutdown the tablet the press power and volume down until you see the bios screen).

3) I changed the boot sequence to booting usb-hdd first. Then save your changes and exit.

4) i plugged in my flash drive and started my tablet, as expected it recognized my flash drive and started acer e-recovery management and did all the copying and other stuff. In the end it asked for the system disk, i just pressed the power down button to turn it off and then pressed it again to start the tablet back, as expected everything worked and the final step got completed in half an hour and the tablet booted to windows 8.

5) The touch wasn't working so i had to plug in my usb mouse to go through the small setup process. To type i popped up the virtual keyboard using the accessibilty button on the bottom left of my screen.

5)There were no drivers or anything so i had use my other pc as wifi driver was not working on the tablet to download the drivers from the acer support page.

6) I extracted the driver zip file and copied it into my flash drive.

7) Now i had to use a usb-hub to simultaneous use my mouse and flash drive. I plugged my flash drive and using my mouse i ran the setup file and within 5 minutes all the drivers were installed.

8)Last step was restarting the windows and the tablet did some installation of other drivers in DOS looking mood.

9)Tablet becomes like new and windows and other acer updates start to run as you boot into windows 8.

P.S. IMPORTANT

1)make sure you keep the tablet plugged in into AC power 2) if the drivers fail to install try the other option(like i used w510p as i don't have a keyboard dock tablet)

padgett

This applies to installing a fresh copy of Windows 8 Pro or Windows to Go also particuarly 5-7 for the special Acer drivers. As mentioned a bare install will not have the touch screen working. I always use a USB keyboard/mouse and have all of the drivers ready.

editoroak

pranavsharma, did you mean in 4) that after resetting the tablet when it asks for the system dvd it takes half an hour for windows to boot?

menjoj123

I get this error:

Restore failed - Can not find image path:C\IMAGES_TMP_DIR\install.wim

help

mame14

I get the same error as well, and as SaSaK mentioned: it gets stuck on 98% for me and asks for disk 2 but it wont accept it even though I have disk 2 mounted. So what should I do? Smiley Sad

menjoj123

You should insert disc 2 in your desktop PC drive and copy all the files in the image folder to the image folder you have in your usb flash memory so that way it can continue

jimijam28

hey- did you get this problem fix? i am getting same error at the end-

Junonia

*** IF YOU HAVE 2 RECOVERY DISKS (that's system + language + recovery 1 + recovery 2) make sure you open RCD.DAT with a text editing program. Find the line that says "PCS = 2" and change it to "PCS = 1" Save, then proceed with copying and pasting. This will fix the problem some people (me) had with the recovery making it to 98% then asking for another disk.