This is a long post. I've been through many steps already. I'm no tech expert but I read directions well (most of the time) and my knowledge comes from working through the problems as they come up. I'm using a newer laptop to make the various discs and drives.
I have an 08 Acer Aspire 5742 running windows 7 hp. I had some deep rooted malware and decided to do a system restore. The system restore worked and the first thing I did was windows update. There were 192 updates and it took a couple of hours for them to download and install. After the restart when it was down to the last 5 updates to be installed, a message appeared on the screen stating that the updates failed and the entire group of updates would be rolled back. Eight hours later nothing had changed. The screen looked exactly the same. I don't know if I did the wrong thing but I assumed the rollback was in an endless loop and made a decision to do the recovery with my OEM Acer discs.
There is one system disc and three recovery disks with the Acer set. I don't know if all recovery discs work exactly the same but in case they don't I'll include the information that came up onscreen. After the system disc is inserted and windows loads files the Acer Recovery Management box options are -
Restore OS to factory defaults - Restore OS to factory default status. All data on C: drive will be deleted. (This was the option I've been attempting to use)
Restore OS and retain user data -Restore only the OS of your PC to the factory defaults. Files from your user accts will be transferred to C:\backup. This option will not remove malware. (When I tried this: No user data has been found on your computer)
Completely restore computer to factory defaults - Restore your computer to factory default status. All data in the hidden partition and on the system partition will be restored. Before restoring, please delete any data on the hard disk (When I tried this: Please remove all files from your hard disk before starting. This function will not work if there are any files on the hard disk.)
So clicking on option 1 there is the notice box of what occurs. The box changes to "Restore Destination"
Hard Drive Name: ST500LM000-1EJ162 ATA device
Partition Label: Acer
Partition Size 8.0 GB
Copying files from disc.
Please insert recovery disc 1.
Copying files from disc
Insert Disc 2.
Copying files from disc
Insert Disc 3 (It's at 80% progress)
Copying files from disc.
Shortly after the disc starts running a message box comes up stating "There is insufficient space on the disc for the temporary files required for this operation"
Press Ok. Please wait a moment. Acer boot screen then the dos "BOOTMGR is missing. Press Control + Alt + Delete"
Pressing C + A + D loops back to the Acer boot screen and back to "BOOTMGR etc."
The original drive crapped out and I replaced it with a 500gb hybrid drive. I partitioned the hard drive for the windows 8 upgrade that was offered when I bought the laptop. I rarely used it and it stayed a 20 gb partition. Thinking the partition might be the problem I downloaded mini partition wizard tool into my new laptop and copied the files onto a CD, a DVD and a flash drive. All had errors. The CD failed. I tried another, it sounded like it was going to boot up then went back to the BOOTMGR screen. I got out a blank dvd, copied the .iso partition file to it. The message onscreen: Virtual hard disk files can't be mounted from image files or from removable media that isn't formatted with NTFS files.
I dug around and finally found my flash drives. The flash drive had a default FAT32 and I changed it to NTFS (based on the message above) and formatted it. I copied the partition file. The message onscreen: An OS wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an OS. In all the above attempts I made sure I changed the boot order in the bios.
I tried another flash drive and kept the FAT32 default. It would sound like it was trying to boot up then:
PX-E61 Media test failure. Check cable
PXE MOF Exiting broadcom
What am I doing wrong? What can I do to fix this drive so that it's cleaned?
