Acer M265 - Factory image for Win 7 - is it "encrypted"?

I want to find out something quick . We have a 4 year old Acer M265 which we purchased with both Win XP and Win 7 supplied by Acer. We've used the XP version now since deployment and now we're desiring to shift to the Win 7 config. So we did the Acer eRecovery procedure and mounted the Win 7 64 bit OS from the "hidden" partition (which takes off XP from the system drive). This went very straightforward and was successful. That all went well. But...

We are using Symantec Sys Recovery as our backup software. That gets installed and when we try to run it to do our initial backup, SSR complains that it can't continue with taking the snapshot because the disk is encrypted. We didn't opt for any "encryption" when installing off the Recovery Partition - never saw any option for it.

Question 1: When invoking and using the "hidden" Recovery Partition for Win 7, and trying to impose Win 7 over the top of XP, does the Acer installation do any encryption of the disk in any way?

Question 2: I don't have any idea why or how this happened. Is there any way to "un-encypt" the C:\ system drive?

This computer is almost ready to go except for this one problem. I hope someone can help me solve this mystery.

Hoib

Accepted answers

Hoib

The end...

Symantec rep (level 2 engineeer) admits that the error they are tossing (pointing to the drive being encrypted) is "incomplete". That means it's wrong. And,without knowing that fact, how's a user supposed to react? Do we just ingore error messages from now on because they're subject to being "incomplete"? Or, which ones do we ignore? Or the ones that are genuine - how do we tell?

There is a utility in the install folder called "Fixinstall.exe". The utility is not in the documentation but is supplied for instances like this. We ran that and it re-registered all the .dlls that the back up program uses. That fixed the problem.

So, Tommy et al, thanks for coming in and helping. The episode is over.

H

All comments

Tommy-Acer

There is no encryption installed when restoring the system to factory defaults.

You may want to be sure that Symantec Sys recovery is looking at the system drive and not the hidden partition ... that's about all that I can think of.

Hoib

Hi, thanks for coming in on this. So, let me just affirm that you think that copying the so-called "Reserved" partition is giving us this problem? I am slightly skeptical because when I attempt a test back up, say, from a folder with some files in it, either from the C:\ drive -OR- the almost empty \ data drive, I get the same error - it thinks the disk (disk 0) is somehow encrypted. And, again, I don't know how that even happened. I just ran chkdsk and "The Volume is Clean" comes up.

I don't know if this is an Acer problem or a Symantec problem because on the phone Symantec is stating it isn't their software; it's a botched operating system. And all I did was invoke a re-image off of the Win 7 install provided by Acer.

What's your view?

H

Tommy-Acer

Again, there is no encryption installed when restoring the system to factory defaults.

We don't support Symantec products, so I really can't say what their program is or is not doing. I can definitively tell you that we do not install any encryption on the system when doing a factory load.

Hoib

OK Tommy. Clear enough - even for me! And I assume that same provision applies to all partitions; systems partitions as well as the "Reserved" partition fo recovery purposes.

I am working with Symantec now by phone to hopefully see what that program is doing. I'm guessing a reinstall is in order. I may try to post back with a resolution so anyone else who runs into this can benefit.

Hoib

Tommy-Acer

Yes, that applies to all partitions, including the recovery partition.

Additional explanation: If we encrypted anything, we would have to decrypt it before performing any restore process which would add overhead, time and headaches for everyone, including if we had to service the system. It is far simpler to not encrypt anything at all.

I've seen too many times when someone has encrypted their system and then lost the key or recovered from a backup but didn't have the key, or something else got messed up and they were unable to decrypt their files even though they had the key.

Hoib

The end...

Symantec rep (level 2 engineeer) admits that the error they are tossing (pointing to the drive being encrypted) is "incomplete". That means it's wrong. And,without knowing that fact, how's a user supposed to react? Do we just ingore error messages from now on because they're subject to being "incomplete"? Or, which ones do we ignore? Or the ones that are genuine - how do we tell?

There is a utility in the install folder called "Fixinstall.exe". The utility is not in the documentation but is supplied for instances like this. We ran that and it re-registered all the .dlls that the back up program uses. That fixed the problem.