Botched recovery - Acer Iconia W4-820

Hello,

I have an Acer Iconia W4-820 tablet with Windows 8.1 bought about 5 years ago.

It was unused for a while and I forgot the Windows password. So I decided to restore the system using the original recovery DVD.

I am using the French version, but am submitting this in English to more readily get advice - I hope you will understand my rough translations of the French interface.

There were two options: 1) reinitialise putting everything back to the way it was when bought (including user data) and 2) reinstall the operating system leaving the user data as intact as possible. For option 1) it said that I had to delete everything on a drive (I forget which) but since I didn't have the password I couldn't do it (I now see that I could have done it through the command prompt without logging in, but too late now), so I chose option 2.

I followed the manual instructions and the files were copied from the recovery DVD, but at the end it said that there was not enough disk space to install the system. When I try to boot it says that winload.efi is missing (error 0x000000f), when I try to reinitialise it says that a partition is missing, and when I try to reinstall the system it says there is a problem an that nothing can be done.

I have no idea about the original volumes, but I see from the command prompt that there is C: which only has a Windows folder with some logs, which is called Recovery, and X: which seems to have the old system (which I guess should go in C: ?) including windload.efi in Windows\System32 .

Could someone help me to get the system back to where the recovery disk will work (after I delete the user data which I can in principle do with the command prompt)?

//Edited the content to add model name.

Accepted answers

billsey

Yes, the 100MB partition (FAT32) is the EFI partition, used to hold some BIOS type stuff that gets loaded before the OS. It look like the installer tried to use that as the system partition, and of course it had no where near enough space for that, so only a couple of folders got created before it ran out of room. Volume 0 was the correct place for Windows, volume 1 holds the recovery software, but not the recovery image. That's the normal state on systems with this small of a drive. The X: drive is a temporary drive mounted in your memory that holds installer stuff usually, so not on any physical partitions. If you perform a 'clean' in diskpart it will clear all partitions off so the recovery image can put you back to normal. The potential issue with that is old data, which will be gone. That process should get you fully back to square one, so you can deal with the rest on a working system.

All comments

JohnRose

That frowning emoticon is of course the D volume.

billsey

Yeah, I sort of wish they'd disable that emoji since if you try to put in D : you always get

instead. Oh well, the regulars here understand.

Likely what it tried to do is create a Windows.old folder to hold anything it thought needed to be kept, and there just isn't enough room for both the new OS copy and stuff from the old. They do this in an attempt to hold on to drivers that aren't included in a normal Windows distribution. Once it's gotten things screwed up you end up with things like partitions in the wrong order, which is why the recovery partition is now coming up as C:.

What we are going to want to do is start over with the recovery disc and at the appropriate step remove all the old partitions before the actual reinstall starts. In a normal Windows install that's the screen where it asks you which partition to install to. In the Acer specific reinstall (which is often completely different for different models) I'm not sure if that's shown, but most of the time it is. At that screen you are given a list of partitions on the drive, typically there is a very small one called EFI (100MB or so), a slightly larger one called Recovery (500MB or so), the big system partition (C: and sized to fill the available space) and a final one that's also not very big called Recovery (1-10GB, but can be optional so might not be on your drive). You want to select each in turn and click the delete option. When you are done with all four you should have the whole drive marked as unallocated space. Select the drive and say install here and it will then create the needed partitions.

Once the recovery install has completed you will be back to the state the tablet was in when first purchased, so Windows 8.1 with Acer supplied apps. You will be offered a lot of updates through Windows update and some are big enough that you might want to drop an empty SD card in to allow the installers to put temporary files there instead of on the system drive. When it gets to the point where it offers you Windows 10 (if it doesn't we can just do that part manually) use the Disk Cleanup tool to select Cleanup System Files and select everything available. That will give you the most room as you can have for the Windows 10 upgrade. In that state, especially with a SD card installed, you should be able to complete the W10 upgrade, followed by it's Windows Updates, so you can eventually end up with a nice clean install with everything.

The tablet isn't compatible with Windows 11, so no need to think about doing that upgrade after the W10 upgrade...

JohnRose

Thanks so much billsey.

My volumes are:

DISKPART>

Nø volume Ltr Nom Fs Type Taille Statut Info

---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

Volume 0 C ACER NTFS Partition 28 G Sain

Volume 1 D Recovery NTFS Partition 400 M Sain Masqué

Volume 2 ESP FAT32 Partition 100 M Sain Masqué

[Masqué= Hidden; Sain=Clean/Working?]

Volume 2 is what shows up in the command module as X: which contains:

08/21/2013 10:29 PM <DIR> Program Files

02/12/2019 02:29 AM <DIR> sources

08/21/2013 10:29 PM <DIR> Users

02/12/2019 02:28 AM <DIR> Windows

0 fichier(s) 0 octets

4 Rép(s) 533,946,368 octets libres

I have saved the contents of X: which seems to have only system generated data (the user generated data like account info seems to have been erased, else where would it be?)

So if I understand correctly you are advising me to:

* delete the X: partition (and its content)

* delete the content of C: (folder IMAGES_TMP_DIR and folder Windows with only Logs)

* run "Completely Restore Computer to Factory Defaults" in "Acer Recovery Management (V10.1.4)".

Is that right? Can I just leave the unused space after deletion of the X: partition (Volume 2), or should I try to do something with it before restoration?

Waiting for your feedback before taking the plunge,

Cheers, John

JohnRose

and I am also wondering where the Acer Recovery Management tool is stocked (including access to the DOS command prompt), is it in the BIOS? You can get it by pressing the Windows key and power on at the same time (not necessary to use the recovery DVD). I hope that when I delete the superfluous files and directories, this will not disappear?

billsey

Yes, the 100MB partition (FAT32) is the EFI partition, used to hold some BIOS type stuff that gets loaded before the OS. It look like the installer tried to use that as the system partition, and of course it had no where near enough space for that, so only a couple of folders got created before it ran out of room. Volume 0 was the correct place for Windows, volume 1 holds the recovery software, but not the recovery image. That's the normal state on systems with this small of a drive. The X: drive is a temporary drive mounted in your memory that holds installer stuff usually, so not on any physical partitions. If you perform a 'clean' in diskpart it will clear all partitions off so the recovery image can put you back to normal. The potential issue with that is old data, which will be gone. That process should get you fully back to square one, so you can deal with the rest on a working system.