windows 8 netbook restoration

AHarvey · 20 Jul 2014 at 00:19

Hey,

My mum has a Acer Aspire V5 netbook running Win 8.

She doesn't use it and wants to sell it so I need to do a factory reset on it, so I found this:

http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answer...2LzEvdGltZS8xNDA1ODA4MTA1L3NpZC9yTmpYS0labA==

but it seems to be asking for a password to do anything....and she can't remember it.

Any suggestions? It's the only account on there too!

Glaucus · 20 Jul 2014 at 00:26

Have you tried just using the built in windows one.

Charms bar > settings > change pc settings > update and recovery > recovery > remove everything and reinstall windows.

AHarvey · 20 Jul 2014 at 00:42

need to be logged in to get that far

mctiny · 20 Jul 2014 at 01:04

AHarvey said:
need to be logged in to get that far

Can't you boot from windows 8 usb/cd advanced options and achieve the same?
or do you still need to login at that point?

Nanobot · 20 Jul 2014 at 11:41

The password and hint is stored in a file on the hidden recovery partition called aimdrs.dat.
If you use Diskpart to unhide the partition, you can open the above file and get the password to do the factory reset... Google aimdrs.dat and it should give you a step by step.

Remember to hide the partition again once you have got the password.