Format old laptop

Drinda

Hi, my son has a Acer Travel Mate XP that he wants to format, he has the original discs, but sometime ago it went into a shop for repare and we think they must have formatted it with another XP not the original discs, ever since then he has not been able to run his discs on it, now he wants to do a fresh start using the original discs, but not sure if there would be a conflict and not be able to run his own Discs to do the fresh start.

Also is there any way of finding the Key for the XP that IS installed on the Laptop, then we will know if they did put another XP on it.

Thanking you for any help, Drinda

NiftyDigits

There is no reason as to why the original discs will not work, regardless of whether another version was installed.
Can you clarify as to the procedure being used and the model number?

When the Acer logo is on screen, hold Alt and keep pressing F10. This will work if the Restore partition is intact. Pasword is 000000. Otherwise you can use the discs. Just place in the drive and restart.

Drinda

Hi, I am not sure how he tried to do it, I was not there at the time.It is a Travel Mate 254LMI_DT

I have the instructions downloaded from wikihow that I downloaded to reformat my own Laptop that is the same Acer as my son's so that I can do it over the holiday.

http://www.wikihow.com/Reformat-a-Laptop

closed

if the factory restore partition hasn't been wiped

http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/desktop/0000/acer/aspiree360/aspiree360faq40.shtml

flashg67

There are several free programs to ind your product key eg http://wpkf.codeplex.com/

Drinda

Thanking you very much, but my son say's it still does not work.
As we don't live near and I am trying to tell him over the phone He is going to bring his Laptop to my home when he visits over exmas and then we can try to get it fixed.

Thanking you both Drinda.

closed

how doesn't it work

Drinda

Hi My son said it just keeps saying ERROR so I have told him to leave it aloan until he brings it home and we can both see what it is doing.

Thanks again Drinda.

NiftyDigits

This covers the use of the discs.