Help! I accidentally uninstalled my Acer Recovery Management software.

cezard
cezard Member Posts: 5

Tinkerer

edited November 2023 in 2018 Archives

Hello,

 

I have recently purchased an Acer Aspire VN-591G which came with Windows 8.1 preinstalled.

 

I now wish to reset it to factory settings and I can't seem to do that as I have accidentally uninstalled the Acer Recovery Management software.

 

The recovery partition is intact, but I can't seem to be able to do anything with it.

 

partitions.png

 

I tried booting up using Alt + F10 but it opens up the default Windows 8 boot screen, where if I choose to reset the system it asks me to insert the recovery media (which I don't have as the system only came with the recovery partition).

 

I think I spent 3h searching through the internet trying to find the Acer Recovery Management software that comes with Windows 8.1 (which I'm hoping will be able to access the recovery partition and use it to restore the laptop to its original state), however, it seems that this is nowhere to be found.

 

I find it absurd for Acer not to provide this software as a download for their systems - how would you be able to use the recovery partition in case of a system failure ?

 

Anyway - my question is - does anyone have a clue of what could be done at this stage ? I tried booting up directly on the recovery partition but I didn't manage to do that (maybe I was doing something wrong - got an error about the disk not being a fixed MBR disk ?

 

diskpart.png

 

Trying to set the recovery partition as active from the disk management screen in Windows is even more useless. I can't assign it a drive letter either to try to access it (I found some forums post that was suggesting to copy the boot files on the primary partition to allow the system to boot into the Acer Recovery Management screen directly.

 

diskmngmt.png

 

At this point, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

 

Answers

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer

    Have you check on BIOS if D2D is enabled?

    whitout D2D enblabed you can't start Acer recovery from ALT+F10

    I'm not an Acer employee.
  • cezard
    cezard Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    Hello,

     

    Yes - the D2D is enabled. Without it I wasn't getting anything when pressing Alt + F10. With it, I'm getting the default Windows 8.1 troubleshooting menu, which I can't use to reset the system though.

     

    Smiley Sad

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer

    Edit:

    instead of acer recovery, use the windows 8.1 recovery function to create a recovery USB media (just check that it copied the correct recovery partition):

     

    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/create-usb-recovery-drive

    I'm not an Acer employee.
  • cezard
    cezard Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    Hello again,

     

    I tried doing that and it seems Windows doesn't see the partition as a recovery partition for some reason ??

     

    recoverror2.png

     

    recoverror.png

     

     

    I did manage to make *some* progress - I used EaseUs Partition Master software and made a copy of the recovery partition onto another empty partition (so I essentially cloned its contents), and it's now accessible. I'm planning on mounting this on a bootable USB stick and try to boot from it - do you think that could work ?

     

    Thanks for your help so far - much appreciated !

     

     

  • cezard
    cezard Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    I'm still wondering if there really is no way of reinstalling the Acer software ? Why doesn't Acer provide this on their website in the Application downloads section on their Support pages ?

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer

    Even if you re-install the eRecovery software, i doubt you will solve your issue, since Acer erecovery partly relies on windows 8.1 recovery software.

    I'm not an Acer employee.
  • Hi,

    At this point, the best that you could do is to purchase Recovery Media from Acer, which will also have the Acer recovery Manager,.
  • cezard
    cezard Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    Hello,

     

    I managed to solve this in the end.

     

    1. First I installed the EaseUS Partition Master software (I guess the following steps can be done with other partition software too, just not with the standard options by Windows). I then resized the C:\ partition for around 20GB and proceeded to make a 'clone' of the Recovery Partition on the unallocated space (this is where EaseUS worked).

     

    I was able then to open the contents of the cloned partition and found an install.wim file in there (biggest file, around 16GB).

     

    2. I then copied this onto an USB drive, removed the 'cloned' partition and resized the C:\ partition back to its original size.

     

    3. I restarted the PC and booted the recovery menu using Alt+F10, where I went to Troubleshoot > Advanced > Command Prompt.

     

    4. Here I formatted the C:\ partition:

     

    format c: /q

     

    5. And then I applied the install.wim file from the USB drive to the C: partition using dsim:

     

    dsim /Apply-Image /ImageFileSmiley Very Happy:\install.wim /ApplyDir:C:\ /index:1

     

    That was basically it the image took around 15 min to load on the C: partition, I restarted the laptop and was prompted with the start-up wizard from Acer to configure the laptop.

     

    One thing I noticed is that all the bloatware was gone (including the Acer Recovery Management software that was previously pre-installed, so I guess this would be a good way to obtain a clean install too.

     

    Anyway - I hope this helps any user with a similar problem as mine.

     

    Thanks for your help.

  • JoshJoseph
    JoshJoseph Member Posts: 21 Networker
    cezard said:

    Hello,

     

    I managed to solve this in the end.

     

    1. First I installed the EaseUS Partition Master software (I guess the following steps can be done with other partition software too, just not with the standard options by Windows). I then resized the C:\ partition for around 20GB and proceeded to make a 'clone' of the Recovery Partition on the unallocated space (this is where EaseUS worked).

     

    I was able then to open the contents of the cloned partition and found an install.wim file in there (biggest file, around 16GB).

     

    2. I then copied this onto an USB drive, removed the 'cloned' partition and resized the C:\ partition back to its original size.

     

    3. I restarted the PC and booted the recovery menu using Alt+F10, where I went to Troubleshoot > Advanced > Command Prompt.

     

    4. Here I formatted the C:\ partition:

     

    format c: /q

     

    5. And then I applied the install.wim file from the USB drive to the C: partition using dsim:

     

    dsim /Apply-Image /ImageFileSmiley Very Happy:\install.wim /ApplyDir:C:\ /index:1

     

    That was basically it the image took around 15 min to load on the C: partition, I restarted the laptop and was prompted with the start-up wizard from Acer to configure the laptop.

     

    One thing I noticed is that all the bloatware was gone (including the Acer Recovery Management software that was previously pre-installed, so I guess this would be a good way to obtain a clean install too.

     

    Anyway - I hope this helps any user with a similar problem as mine.

     

    Thanks for your help.

    Can you explain first step in detail or can you make a videos and give it to me or its link any please.