# Unable to press ctrl+F11 at startup



## laurag (Jul 23, 2007)

Hi, I recently had Vista loaded onto my computer so that I could fool around with it.. it's been giving me a tonne of problems and now I would like to go to back to my Windows XP. When I purchased my computer, Acer (I guess) partitioned my hard drive and put Win XP recovery in it's own partition. I've had to use this partition before and doing ctrl+f11 didn't cause me any issues until I got Vista. Now when I reboot my computer, I get the blank grey ACER page for a second or so and then it goes straight into the "loading windows..." page. Pressing and holding ctrl+f11 .. computer just doesn't clue in. I can get into BIOS okay from they grey ACER page.. figured I'd toss that in.




...help!

Computer is an ACER Aspire 5000
Don't think you need any sort of specific specs, here some generals:
Windows Vista Home Premium
AMD Turion 64 
1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 
80GB 5400RPM SATA
2.2GHz processor


----------



## OldGrayGary (Jun 29, 2006)

Hi laurag

Any luck yet? If not, read on:

It might be simply that you are entering the wrong key combination = try <Alt> + <F10> instead.

There are usually several ways to recover your Acer Aspire: 1) using their eRecovery tools from within Windows XP - or from a Recovery Environment invoked as the computer starts, or 2) using the Recovery Disks that shipped with the notebook. You can't reach eRecovery from within XP -- but you might be able to reach it via <Alt> + <F10>.

Before attempting any of these recovery strategies, enter your Bios Setup (by pressing F2 as the PC is powering on), and on the "Main" tab = make sure that the setting for *D2D Recovery* is set to *Enabled*

*Using Acer eRecovery:*
1) Try using the <Alt> + <F10> key combination to enter eRecovery as your computer is starting up. 
2) Put in the password to enter the eRecovery environment (the default is six zeroes).
3) If you haven't yet created a Recovery disk image, the program will prompt you to create one. You can, of course, skip this if you aren't interested in saving a disk image of your current Vista installation.
4) If you've already created a backup disk image for your system while it was still using Windows XP, and saved that image either to hard drive or to CD or DVD, you can restore using that backup. Select "Recovery Actions" and then either "Restore from latest backup image" (hard drive) or "Restore from CD/DVD backup"
5) If you have made no Recovery images yourself, you'll only have the choice "Recover factory default system". **This completely erases all data entered into your system since the PC came home** [it copies the original factory disk-image back onto your system partition from a hidden recovery partition] --- so you'll want to save any personal data added since then before you start the recovery.

If your Aspire came with a pre-made Recovery Disk Set, the main disk in the set should be bootable. You simply set the boot order in your Bios Setup to boot from the CD/DVD drive first, and put the Recovery Disk in, and reboot, following the intructions. 

Best of luck!
. . . Gary

P.S. here is a link to the eRecovery manual over at Acer.com --- http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/Acer eRecovery Management.pdf --- and here is a link to your main user guide for the Aspire 5000 --- http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/AS3000-5000_UG_ENG.pdf --- these are in the Adobe ".pdf" format - which you can read with the free Adobe Reader.


----------

