(this is a situation where I kind of answered my own question here :) , hoping this will help someone else out if this thread pops up on a google search )
So in the newer acer laptops running Windows 11... in my case it's the A515-45-R1BF model (Acer Aspire 5 ryzen 7 amd processor model) ... I noticed the strangest thing, the acer care center does not appear to have the "recovery drive" option ... it's always a good idea to have a 16 GB or bigger usb drive you can use to create a bootable usb drive that will restore Acer to it's "factory reset" condition , that will restore the laptop to the condition it was in when you first bought it. Of course it would suck losing all your programs and files but if your laptop simply isn't working it's better to at least try this and hope this gets the laptop up and running again.
After fiddling around with my laptop I found that a search on the Windows 11 searchbar for "recovery drive" turns up an app by that exact same name "recovery drive", click on that and it brings you right to the same window you used to be able to get to using the acer care center.. exact same dialogue as before on the window, " create a recovery drive even if your pc can’t start you can use a recovery drive to reset it" and so on (you want to make sure to click "yes" to whether or not you want system files stored on the usb drive too) ... personally I think it's rather strange the acer team didn't simply include that function in the acer care center as something you could click on too for people who have previously purchased acer laptops and are used to it being there in the acer care center.
As far as how to boot from that usb recovery drive, make sure you hit "F2" when you turn your PC on to get to the boot menu, go to the boot option, and use the F6 key to bump the usb drive up to the top of the list then exit saving changes.. you'll probably want to go back and undo that change in the bios after recovering your laptop back to it's original condition.
Given how much it would suck losing all your programs and files you could try a free option like Macrium Reflect though it's worth noting the free option will no longer come with any security updates and has limited functionality (but if you're just looking to create a system image of the drive your laptop boots off of and save it as a backup say every month or so it should work fine for that long as you remember to do it each month I'm sure you could set a reminder on your phone or computer or what not) .. there's other free backup software you can research and install too although also worth noting that I haven't personally tried using Macrium Reflect to restore an acer laptop ... I have however heard glowing recommendations for it from practically everybody on the internet after doing research on it. If you prefer the paid version I know this past Black Friday the paid licensed version (you pay once for the license and you're done so a better deal in my opinion than the subscription models for other backup software) was on sale for half price but worth noting a lot of people are perfectly happy with the free version Macrium provides. I can tell you from personal experience there are a lot of people (myself included) having problems with Acronis True Image if you're not on their subscription model plan which kind of sucks I enjoyed using the pay for one license and you're done version of Acronis but sadly that doesn't seem to play well with Windows 11 whereupon I noted the free version of Macrium Reflect installed and worked just fine on Windows 11.
Anyways I hope that helps someone who ran into the same question I did :)
[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]
