Usb recovery windows 8.1 unable to reset pc

Hello and thank you for any helpful advice you may have! I have an Aspire M5-583P-5859 which was factory installed with Windows 8.1 64-bit. My hard drive went belly up, and I purchased and installed a new one. I did previously make a USB recovery drive when the computer was working, so I went to use this now. Unfortunately I get the error "unable to reset pc. a required partition is missing" when I try to reset the PC. After some research I realized I had many install.swm files instead of 1 install.wim file on my USB drive, and I followed the instrutions listed at http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/44021-need-help-reinstalling-windonws-8-usb-2.html

to create the files CreatePartitions.txt and ApplyImage.bat on the USB. Everything went according to the instructions, all operations succesful with no errors, but I still do not see the option to "continue to windows 8".

All I want is to get the computer up and running with the new hard drive. I made the recovery USB media for exactly this situation, why is it not working? Any help would be very much appreciated!!

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IronFly

if you don't mind to download drivers and Acer applications from Acer support website, you can download a vanilla windows 8.1 installation media from Microsoft, use it to install windows 8.1 and then do the downloads from Acer:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

jpt3333

Will the download from Acer somehow be able to verify my original Windows license? This is my first time doing this, and I thought that if I hadn't originally made the recovery usb media, then I would lose this license and have to repurchase Windows 8.1.

Also, if my usb recovery media had actually worked like it was supposed to, would it have just installed windows 8.1 or would it have installed all the other software components that were originally on it? Just wondering if there is anything to gain by continuing to beat my head and trying to get the usb recovery media to work....

Thanks for the help IronFly, much appreciiated!

jpt3333

Also, I'm going to upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible in the process. Can I just download Windows 10 installation media instead of Windows 8.1, or do I need to stick with 8.1 at first because that was what was factory installed? Thanks!

jpt3333

OK just realized I misunderstood your suggestion IronFly, but now I get it. Your suggestion is to download installation media from windows, and then get everything else from Acer that was originally installed. Does this basically achieve the same goal I'm after, or will I miss out on some of the factory installed software? And, as in my previous question, will Windows have a way of somehow verifying my previous license? Lastly, can I just download Windows 10 without having to go through windows 8.1? Thanks!

philetus

Since your Recovery drive is not ging to recover the system, you will be clean installing the operating system only.Everything else that came installed will be gone.

If you want it factory, you can go here and put in your serial number. Acer will tell you how much a recovery disk or drive will cost. The disks I have bought were $19.95.

https://store.acer.com/en-us/extended/recovery/

Windows to might pick up your key. MS was talking about it a while back and said it was going to change it so you didn't need to do the the internet upgrade first before you could clean install and be activated.

If you want to try it, everytime it asks you to put in a key, tell it skip or not now and skip the wifi. When it's done, sign in to your wifi and see if it activates. Otherwise, download and install Windows 8.1, run Windows update once and download and install Win 10.

IronFly

jpt3333 wrote:
OK just realized I misunderstood your suggestion IronFly, but now I get it. Your suggestion is to download installation media from windows, and then get everything else from Acer that was originally installed. Does this basically achieve the same goal I'm after, or will I miss out on some of the factory installed software? And, as in my previous question, will Windows have a way of somehow verifying my previous license? Lastly, can I just download Windows 10 without having to go through windows 8.1? Thanks!

the only difference will be the missing Acer recovery partition that can be activated pressing ALT+F10 combo keys.

as Philetus told you, simply skip the step asking a product key and install it, at the end it will read your product key from BIOS.

about windows 10, at the moment (it will change on future releases) you need to upgrade from a previous windows version first and authenticate, then you can perform a clean install skipping the product key requests.

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