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Laptop recovery partition and SOGA
vyle
Posts: 2,379 Forumite
I recently purchased an ultrabook, and decided it was time to give my netbook a bit of a spring clean before I sell it/pass it on/possibly keep it as a spare, and so after backing up my data, I tried to invoke system recovery to restore the factory image.
This is usually done on most laptops by pressing F10, F11 or something similar on boot.
My netbook is an Acer Aspire One A0751H, and the accepted boot recovery method is to either hold Alt+F10, or just to press F10. I tried both and neither worked.
Puzzled, I wondered if I'd accidentally deleted the recovery partition. I downloaded Partedit 32 and ran it, and sure enough, the recovery partition was sitting on my hard drive. When I browsed the partition, I could see that the master boot record was missing that allowed the netbook to respond to the F10 command.
After much searching online, I found the boot record and reinstalled that, and BAM, I was able to restore to factory settings.
The problem is that whenever you do this, the factory image refresh DELETES the boot record, meaning the only way to do a factory reset...an important feature of any modern laptop, is absent at the time of purchase and is only available through high level tinkering.
I've never had this problem with the laptop before, because I have never needed it until now, but would one consider this to be an inherant fault under which the goods can be rejected (even though I've had it for nearly three years). I know I won't get my full money back, but if I was going to sell it on ebay I doubt I'd get more than £100 and then I'd have someone get a refund off me for the exact same reason down the line.
I know I could give a nice letter to the retailer first, but I like to be certain on my position before I do anything like that so I don't come off as a tit :P.
This is usually done on most laptops by pressing F10, F11 or something similar on boot.
My netbook is an Acer Aspire One A0751H, and the accepted boot recovery method is to either hold Alt+F10, or just to press F10. I tried both and neither worked.
Puzzled, I wondered if I'd accidentally deleted the recovery partition. I downloaded Partedit 32 and ran it, and sure enough, the recovery partition was sitting on my hard drive. When I browsed the partition, I could see that the master boot record was missing that allowed the netbook to respond to the F10 command.
After much searching online, I found the boot record and reinstalled that, and BAM, I was able to restore to factory settings.
The problem is that whenever you do this, the factory image refresh DELETES the boot record, meaning the only way to do a factory reset...an important feature of any modern laptop, is absent at the time of purchase and is only available through high level tinkering.
I've never had this problem with the laptop before, because I have never needed it until now, but would one consider this to be an inherant fault under which the goods can be rejected (even though I've had it for nearly three years). I know I won't get my full money back, but if I was going to sell it on ebay I doubt I'd get more than £100 and then I'd have someone get a refund off me for the exact same reason down the line.
I know I could give a nice letter to the retailer first, but I like to be certain on my position before I do anything like that so I don't come off as a tit :P.
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Comments
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Not that important thenan important feature of any modern laptop, is absent at the time of purchase and is only available through high level tinkering.
I've never had this problem with the laptop before, because I have never needed it until now
I'd say you're on a hiding to nothing and I wouldn't consider this to be a fault.0 -
Not that important then
I'd say you're on a hiding to nothing and I wouldn't consider this to be a fault.
That's similar to "I've never needed airbags until my car crashed. turned out they didn't work but cos I didn't need them until that time, they're not important."
It's a key part of a modern laptop that isn't there.0 -
Maybe burn a copy of the recovery partition files onto blanks discs or a USB stick for the new owner?0
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nomoneytoday wrote: »Maybe burn a copy of the recovery partition files onto blanks discs or a USB stick for the new owner?
They'd still need to know how to mess around with partitions...though now I've got it to do it once, windows won't let me change the partition type from 27 to 7 so I can do it again :-\.0 -
If there is no boot record then it ain't gonna boot.The problem is that whenever you do this, the factory image refresh DELETES the boot record, meaning the only way to do a factory reset...an important feature of any modern laptop, is absent at the time of purchase and is only available through high level tinkering.
Are you sure it's not something you caused. Looking on the net other people have had no problems using Alt F10 to recover the machine.
The alt F10 action is very time critical. Only hit alt f10 when the Acer logo appears els it won't work.This is a system account and does not represent a real person. To contact the Forum Team email forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com0 -
Even if by a miracle they did agree it was faulty after 3 years, they would only need to fix it. So there is even less chance of a partial refund than getting then to accept the fault in the first place.0
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If there is no boot record then it ain't gonna boot.
Are you sure it's not something you caused. Looking on the net other people have had no problems using Alt F10 to recover the machine.
The alt F10 action is very time critical. Only hit alt f10 when the Acer logo appears els it won't work.
I literally did nothing. What it looks like is the Acer image has the standard windows boot record that does not recognise the d2d recovery.
When I opened the partition, there was no trace of Mbrwrwin.exe nor rtmbr.bin which SHOULD be there.
When I initialised them, d2d worked, and I restored the computer.
after checking it all worked, I tried again, and it didn't work. It appears that when it restores the factory image, it also restores the partition to its original form which is without acer's specific boot record.
Furthermore, looking for my particular model:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=acer+a0751h+f10&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
will reveal it's not uncommon for alt+f10 to work. Interestingly enough, when I did get it to work, it only worked with f10 on its own, NOT alt+f10.0
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