Where can I get hold of ACER OEM 8.1 installation media for my XC-703 ?

Hi - I need to get hold of the ACER installation for a bog standard Acer Aspire XC-703, it's 8.1 with BING which is a cheap 8.1 version with OEM licence key which isn't compatible with a retail 8.1 installation creation tool from microsoft.

After it was ransomewared, it was Windows reset but Windows Update and Windows defender dont update, trying another reset windows said "some files are missing". It's up and running now with a "bittorrented" 8.1 with Bing but still have issues with it not finding with Windows updates (tried everything by the way) so want to start a fresh with a proper new OEM installation (I'm ok with bloatware) instead of paying £90 for a Windows 10 retail.

I've emailed Acer support but heard nothing back in the past week.

Accepted answers

billsey

Could be the holidays are slowing them down. The Acer support people in your neck of the woods (I'm assuming UK from the £ symbol) should be able to fix you up with the recovery disks, for a fee that's liable to be less than a new OS license.

All comments

billsey

Could be the holidays are slowing them down. The Acer support people in your neck of the woods (I'm assuming UK from the £ symbol) should be able to fix you up with the recovery disks, for a fee that's liable to be less than a new OS license.

sfpreschool

Thanks billsey, Acer have come back with an offer of recovery discs for around £50 which I think is a bit steep as it's just over half the cost of a retail version of Windows 10. I think the pc was originally £300 2yrs ago!

billsey

Yeah, they really want to 'encourage' users to either keep the disks (when they're included) or create the disks (when they're not). They have to pay MS for a new license for each set of disks they ship even if they're being used to recover an existing installation. Microsoft licensing can be a real pain for system builders and OEMs, but they do get them for a lot less than retail.

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