Aspire M5201 Trying to recover from hard drive failure

JayDee

Hello.

 

I have an Aspire M5201 with a failed hard drive. I acquired a new hard drive, formatted it for Windows Vista (the OS the machine was previously running), installed it in the machine, used the system disc purchased from Acer (p/n SD SA509.SV0) to successfully clean it, used the other system disc (p/n SD SAP09.SV3) to successfully boot to Windows, then attempted to recover using the 3 recovery discs (p/n DD.SAP09.SV7). Windows sees the hard drive and asks if I want to recover to it. I say yes; Windows asks for disc 1 of 3; I put it in the drive, it spins up then... it ejects the drive containing the disc and asks for disc 1 of 3 again. I looked at the disc -- no scratches or anything I can see that would cause a problem. I called Acer and gave them my Aspire's SNID. They confirmed the part numbers for the discs are what they have on file for that model.

 

What else can I try here? Am I doing something wrong? I appear to have a perfectly working computer in every respect except that I can't recover from what appear to be faulty recovery discs. The BIOS sees the new hard drive. The computer boots to Windows using the boot disc. Windows sees new the hard drive. It seems to be formatted properly for the system. It's like the recovery discs from Acer aren't right.

 

Anyone else had this problem? What was the solution?

 

Thanks in advance for any forthcoming help.

 

JayDee

Tommy-Acer

You should not need to boot to Windows in order to use the recovery media.

 

Insert the system disc and boot from it.

 

Please review this article:
http://community.acer.com/t5/Community-KB/Reloading-your-Acer-computer/ta-p/45793

JayDee

Thanks for your response.

 

Booting from the System Disc (p/n SD.SAP09.SV3) automatically loads a runtime version of Windows then loads Acer eRecovery Management v6.0.11. It asks for my language preference, then asks if I want to recover to factory default settings. I select that option (the only other option is 'exit'), then it asks for recover disc 1. I insert recovery disc 1 and it ejects and asks for it again.

 

Is there another boot disc or some other recovery media from Acer that I can try?

 

Thanks.

 

JayDee

Two other pieces of information that may or may not be relevant: 1) I am in Canada; and 2) the operating system was Windows Vista 64 bit.

Tommy-Acer

Have you attempted to insert the other discs when it asks for Recovery Disk 1?

JayDee

Yes, same result: discs are ejected; eRecovery Management asks for disc 1.

Tommy-Acer

You have a private message.