How to restore ACER XC-885 from windows repair disk and Acronis True Image Home 2020 (ATIH)

gazzer

I decided to upgrade my NEW XC-885 by installing a SSD system disk and followed the instructions in ATIH  to move the system to the new disk. I restored the system, but it will not boot I've tried bootrec and bcdedit etc. to no avail and have spoiled the disk partition structure. I reinstalled the original disk but it wont boot either. Help, and no I only found out about the ACER care centre etc. after the even. Is there any way to get the PC back working, there is nothing on it I need (its new) so a vanilla Win 10 would do.

Thanks Garry

billsey

Yes, and it won't even be too hard unless you are stuck at home with only the one computer.

Go to a different system and create a Windows install flash drive. You can use either Microsoft's Media Creation Tool or just download the ISO and use Rufus. Your machine originally came with Windows 10, so we know it's a UEFI boot machine using GPT drive configurations and don't have to deal with the old legacy BIOS and MBRs. Make sure you download the Windows 10 image that matches your machine most closely, likely Windows 10 Home 64bit. Boot from the image and tell it to install. When it comes up asking for the partition to use remove all existing partitions and tell it to install into the unallocated full drive. Windows will then automatically create everything needed for your UEFI boot. It will also use the key from your BIOS to validate Windows the first time you boot into the OS.

You might have to download a driver or two from the Acer support site in order to get everything up, and it wouldn't hurt to download at least the network drivers ahead of time, just to be sure.

Once you are all up and running with a clean OS you *ought* to be able to install ATIH and have it restore your old system.. Just don't have it try to restore the whole disk image, have it restore the files instead.