Having trouble restoring my Aspire 7736Z-4809 to factory defaults

Hi all,

Ihave tried running the "recovery" CDs that were made from the system when new, but to no avail. When it tries to boot up after running through the recovery process, it stops and displays the message "Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run on this computer's hardware."

It seems to me that sometime in the past, I was able to return it to factory defaults using some stuff that's on it's (perhaps hidden) hard disk partitions. Does anybody know how I could do that?

Failing that, I could also wipe the disk, reinstall Windows 7 from scratch using generic installation media (anybody know where I can download that from?) along with the product key# on the sticker on the bottom of the machine. Of course if I do that, I'll also need to download the drivers appropriate to the machine (anybody know where I can get them)?

Thanks in advance to anybody who can help.

Accepted answers

IronFly

you can try ALT+F10 at boot too, if your recovery partition is still here.

(check if D2D support is enabled on BIOS)

All comments

IronFly

you can try ALT+F10 at boot too, if your recovery partition is still here.

(check if D2D support is enabled on BIOS)

Bozo-D-Clown

Thanks! That was exactly what I was trying to remember that I did last time (which was years ago).

I think that it's completely lame that the recovery disks don't work. Acer should take whoever is responsible for that, and make them apologize on-camera in a room full of tear gas.

IronFly

You welcome. Smiley Happy

once restored, re-do the factory recovery CDs.

Bozo-D-Clown

That's a good thought. But remaking the CDs won't help. The ones that I made the first time are fine, I suspect. I experienced exactly the same problem when I tried the hard disk version (hitting <alt-F10>). There's probably a problem with the hard drive's partitions, boot sector, or something.

Next I'll try using a disk cloning app, to make a copy of a working disk that's in another identical machine. If that works and results in having a bootable disk, I'll try "recovering" it with the <alt-F10> procedure.

I loathe doing this sort of thing. And Windows causes me at least 25 times as much misery along these lines as does OS X, not that I'm a fan of OS X either. I keep thinking that I'll break down and become a Linux power user. But that learning curve puts me off too.

Thanks for your help, reminding me about the <alt-F10> option. That would have done the trick, had I not been clobbered by malware.

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