# Acer Aspire MBR and System Re-install



## Appalbarry (May 14, 2011)

I just spent two days on this and thought I'd document it for everyone.

Acer Aspire 5542 Laptop
AMD Athlon Dual core
Windows 7 Home Premium.

Had the system for a while, then added Ubuntu Linux as a dual boot.
Wanted to pass the laptop on, so needed to restore the system to its factory state.

*Didn't create the Acer recovery disks - should have.*

I started up the *Acer eRecovery Management* program in Windows. Chose *Restore*, then *Completely Restore System to Factory Defaults*. Machine churned away for a long time, and looked like it was doing just that.

Reboot - the Linux Grub menu comes up, and tried to autoboot into Linux.

Guess the Restore wasn't quite Complete.

After looking about on the 'net, concluded that I needed to remove the Linux partitions from the hard drive. Did that, rebooted, no change. Ran *Completely Restore System to Factory Defaults* again. No change

*Concluded that the changes that Ubuntu made to the disk boot needed to be nuked, so went in search of tools to fix the MBR.*

Wound up downloading a copy of the* Hirens Boot CD* Hiren's BootCD 15.1 - All in one Bootable CD » www.hiren.info and used one of the MBR tools to "repair" the MBR.

Now when I reboot I am told that there is *No Operating System Found*.

At this point I had a chat with Acer "support" They flatly stated that my only option was to pay them money to have them mail me a recovery CD. 

So, no recovery disks, won't boot, here's what I did:

I knew there was a restore partition on the hard drive. I suspected there was a new Windows 7 install on another partition. I figured that the real problem was that the MBR didn't know where the Windows partition was. 

1. Booted the laptop using the Hires Boot CD.
2. Scrolled down the menu and chose to boot from Hard Drive 1, Partition 2.
3. Windows 7 starts with the new install screens. I work though the usual Windows installation steps, booting from the Hirens CD each cycle into Windows 7.
4. Once Windows is installed, run *Acer eRecovery Management* from the Start Menu, and create the three Recovery DVDs.

Booted off of the Recovery CDs and did full reinstall, only to discover that despite what Acer tech guy told me, the MBR remained borfed.

Found this page that told how to create a *Windows System Repair Disk* - which is NOT the same as the Acer Recovery Disk.
System Repair Disc - Create - Windows 7 Forums

Created that disk, then booted from it.

Then followed the instruction on THIS page, which tells you how to repair the MBR in Windows 7:
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

Specifically, from the System Repair Disk menu, choose Command Prompt, and then type in:

Bootrec.exe /FixMbr

BINGO! Everything works.

Hope this helps someone else.


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