Hard drive failed, now no xp :(

disco Stu · 8 Mar 2008 at 21:57

The harddrive on my Acer has failed so I've fitted a new one but when I use the reinstall disc's all I get is 'no operating system found' and cannot even get to the reinstall disc's. Whats to do????

beermonster · 8 Mar 2008 at 22:12

you probably have to go into bios and enable the f12 or f11 boot menu option so you can boot from cd or just change the boot up sequence

disco Stu · 8 Mar 2008 at 22:22

I can get into the bios and change to boot from cd but I think because the acer partion is missing(new hard drive) then that must have had something on it so the the recovery disc's could be used

Slinky1989 · 8 Mar 2008 at 22:24

As soon as you turn on the pc, even if it doesn't show the bios screen, keep tapping f12 at 0.5 to 1 second intervals. That should bring up your boot menu on acers I believe.

beermonster · 8 Mar 2008 at 23:00

you can either use the restore partion which is now out the picture due to new hard drive or restore discs , they are not dependant on each other,

Behemoth · 8 Mar 2008 at 23:08

The Acer restoration CD maybe looking for a Tattoo on the hard drive. Quite a common trick by certain main stream laptop makers to do this so that only replacment parts supplied by them can be used.

The other option you have is get an oem copy of Vista or XP and use the key you have on the underside of the laptop to activate the operating system, then get all your drivers from Acer.

Thats what I did with my laptop, gets rid of that pre-installed unwanted software.