Z3-710 ADMINISTRATION

DEAKIN
DEAKIN Member Posts: 2 New User
in All-In-One PCs
hi first time on here, I have recently purchased a used AIO Acer Z3-710 and when I received it and plugged it in it didn't require a password and wasn't factory re-set like out of the box, I am now having administration issues, will it be safe to factory re-set it my self without killing the computer?

Best Answers

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,234 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    Yeah, that model came out just as the switch from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 was happening (2015?), so it's tough to tell what was in the recovery partition. I'd do an in place upgrade to Windows 10 with the remove my files option to get it back to stock, but with the current drivers still installed. If you try a Windows reset it's liable to work, but potentially could get part way through and then barf, leaving you with a clean install as the only real option. In that case you'd just have to download the drivers from Acer to make sure anything skipped could be fixed easily.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,234 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    If the recovery image hasn't been wiped by Windows 10 updates (and they tend to wipe it with each semi-annual update) then you can do the Acer d2d recovery and get it back to the same version of Windows 10 it shipped with. Unless you need to various applications Acer shipped though I'd just do the reinstall I suggested. You can kind of tell when the recovery is still there by using Disk Management to look at the hidden partitions. You likely have four, one that's 100MB or so in size holding the EFI boot info, another about a gig in size that holds recovery software, a fourth about 10GB in size that holds the actual recovery image and the system partition that covers the rest of the disk. If you give a drive letter to the recovery image and look at it you can see the dates on the files. If the newest are vintage 2015 it might be the original recovery, if any are newer than that it's the newer Windows version. A reset from within Windows will use that as the image.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.

Answers

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,234 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    Yeah, that model came out just as the switch from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 was happening (2015?), so it's tough to tell what was in the recovery partition. I'd do an in place upgrade to Windows 10 with the remove my files option to get it back to stock, but with the current drivers still installed. If you try a Windows reset it's liable to work, but potentially could get part way through and then barf, leaving you with a clean install as the only real option. In that case you'd just have to download the drivers from Acer to make sure anything skipped could be fixed easily.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • DEAKIN
    DEAKIN Member Posts: 2 New User
    billsey said:
    Yeah, that model came out just as the switch from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 was happening (2015?), so it's tough to tell what was in the recovery partition. I'd do an in place upgrade to Windows 10 with the remove my files option to get it back to stock, but with the current drivers still installed. If you try a Windows reset it's liable to work, but potentially could get part way through and then barf, leaving you with a clean install as the only real option. In that case you'd just have to download the drivers from Acer to make sure anything skipped could be fixed easily.
    hi Billsey, thanks for your response, the computer did come to me with windows 10 running on it, and no files that i can see, although its not factory reset it seems to be clean? is it worth resetting it?
  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,234 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    If the recovery image hasn't been wiped by Windows 10 updates (and they tend to wipe it with each semi-annual update) then you can do the Acer d2d recovery and get it back to the same version of Windows 10 it shipped with. Unless you need to various applications Acer shipped though I'd just do the reinstall I suggested. You can kind of tell when the recovery is still there by using Disk Management to look at the hidden partitions. You likely have four, one that's 100MB or so in size holding the EFI boot info, another about a gig in size that holds recovery software, a fourth about 10GB in size that holds the actual recovery image and the system partition that covers the rest of the disk. If you give a drive letter to the recovery image and look at it you can see the dates on the files. If the newest are vintage 2015 it might be the original recovery, if any are newer than that it's the newer Windows version. A reset from within Windows will use that as the image.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.

Categories