[Skelton]

ACER DOES NOT SUPPORT DUAL BOOT COMPUTERS

ACER RECOVERY DVD DOES NOT RECOVER HARD DRIVES WITHOUT PARTITIONS

I have an Acer Aspire M3461 on which I wanted to run dual boot with Linux. I tried to install Ubuntu 8.10 (more on that in another thread) and it unhid the recovery partition on the hard drive, which caused problems when booting.

Since I had the recovery DVD's I assumed (and you know what they say about assuming) that it would reload my machine if I had a problem. Proceeded to do a full install of Ubuntu 8.10 AMD-64 (its an Intel 64-bit machine but the AMD 64 version works wonderfully). Decided I needed to have Vista up and running due to connectivity problems with one of my printers and tried to recover the machine.

To make a long story short, I wiped all the partitions off the machine and went to relaod. Kept getting "Type Mismatch" error from a 32 bit program during the recovery. Called Acer and they said 1) they do not support dual boot machines, 2) if the partitions are changed, the recovery DVD does not work, then proceeded to explain that I would have to send the entire computer back to them to restore the hard disk.

...needless to say I was irrate...

Hard disk partitioning is one of the simplest of proceedures and the tech support folks refused to aide me in this.

After reloading Ubuntu I looked at the recovery disk and found some files that define the partitions on the computer. As I find out more and can develop a work around I'll post on this thread.

Those of you that were able to get your recovery DVD to work on a wiped hard disk, please post how you did it. If you are in the same situation as I am, please note that too.

If you have a Vista based Acer, my recommendations is not to change the configuration. The recovery DVD requires that the partitions be intact and that they be of the sized defined on the DVD. Work is ongoing to make an extractor for the DVD to reload your ACER by third parties.

Other sites recommend getting a copy of the OEM version of Vista that you are running in order to restore your machine. The OEM version will allow you to input your computer's key code. This should solve dual boot issues you would have. However, using the ACER recovery DVD is not going to be an option.

[1002richards]

Hi, Welcome to TSG and thanks for the info.
I can't help with the issue you raise but I suggest you take your email addr out before it gets picked up by a spambot.
People will reply in this thread or by pm.

Richard

Spambot: Def from a spamguide

"What is a spambot?

A Spambot is a piece of software, a program that someone has written. Which language it was written in does not matter, but most are probably written in C for speed and portability reasons. A spambot should not be confused with regular robots, also known as spiders or web-crawlers.
A spambot starts out on a web page. It scans the page for two things: hyperlinks and email addresses. It stores the email addresses to use as targets for spam, and follows each hyperlink to a new page, starting the process all over. Spambots also usually do not follow the guidelines in the robots.txt file, like civilized robots are supposed to. Most spambots are a part of a larger program, allowing them to send out the spam to email addresses as it find them. Others merely store the email addresses for later use.
Spambots vary in their intelligence and sophistication, but even the smartest can be fairly easily fooled by the tricks on this site. The simplest spambot would simply find mailto links, and follow each hyperlink as it comes up, until it reaches a dead end. The smartest ones can recognize email addresses in many forms, recognize dead links, avoid certain types of email addresses (such as *.edu and *.gov) and track many pages at once."

[Skelton]

Thanks, but I provoke the bots on purpose. I gather the information and feed it to sites like Google, AOL, Yahoo, and others. Helps keep the crap out. I also backtrace the spam and see about getting the users kicked off their network. If out of the USA, I find the admins for the ISP's and tell them to remove the user/do something with them, or have their names forwarded to the TSA to be placed on the No-Fly-List. You'd be amazed at the number of admins that resolve the problems quickly. The only ones that are a problem so far are the Chinese. They use fake names and phone numbers. The Russians will complain and use threatening language but quickly get about to killing the spam.

In the imortal words of Dr. Bunny: "Ain't I a stinker!"