Windows 8 Win 8 - Major Boo Boo - Someone Please Help!

terazbox said:

Husband says Win 7 should go back on but alas, I don't think there is a way to make it boot from my recovery discs.

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Hello and welcome to the forum.
I would think that if restoring Windows 7 from you "recovery disks" is your goal and as long as your DVD device is still recognized in your BIOS then you should be good to go. You may either have to set it as first boot device from within your BIOS or else there may be an option using a key combination or one of your F keys to evoke a menu to select it as a one time first boot device. Check you documentation for the laptop or google it online for your particular computer.
Regards
Randy

NOTE: And if there is a driver actually needed for your DVD (more likely firmware if anything) then be sure to obtain it from the computer manufacturer's website and please stay away from those driver finder sites as they are not always (or generally for that matter) the best resource.

If this was originally a system with a Windows 7 preinstalled, then you should have Windows 7 recovery partition from where you could try to install. procedures are different by manufacturer. Best is to look that up on your manufacturers website.

Thank you Trouble for your help!

Well, after a busy Easter afternoon, I came home and attempted to try getting the recovery discs to work.

Alas, after a few attempts at using the F keys, I could not accomplish getting it to boot from the CD.

So, I thought I'd try reinstalling Win 8 and see what happened.

While it was loading, I ended up napping on the couch and when I woke up, it was at the screen asking to restart.

Well, I did but I had left the 1st recovery disc in and it attempted to reboot from that. It got as far as the 3rd and final one but kept coming up with the message Failed to restore image or something like that.

After a few attempts, it restarted but the Win 8 screen but ran into trouble there.

Apparently, it was trying to decide where to boot Win 8 from and it seems that there were 2 versions there. One was labeled volume 3 and I think this laptop used to have just the C drive and the Q service - which I think is where the recovery files are stored.

That makes me think that maybe there was no place to overwrite Win 7?

It did allow me to do a recovery/refresh thing so I figured why not?

It wouldn't allow the one where you keep settings though, so I proceeded with the entire wipe and restore.

Now, hubby and I say we have a very nude computer and he says I need to put some clothes on it.

Yep, at this point...we need laughter, however warped.

So, this is where I'm at.

We have a very bare bones Win 8, we do have internet working and yes, the CD drive works for music - haven't checked it for DVD playback.

Downloaded a free version of Real Player to test that. The volume doesn't go up anywhere near as loud as it should but maybe it needs driver updates/updates or something.

Not a big concern right now anyhow.

Got my virus program back on it - we have Webroot.

So, my overall thought process is this.....

I like Win 8 but we did have a few glitches. The 1st time we tried to install it back in November when we purchased the upgrade - had 2 problems with it. 1st - one of my older games wouldn't not play and the 2nd - the keyboard developed a wacky thing while I was typing...the cursor would move back up a few lines or so and start inserting my text wherever it landed....which it is again doing.

So, we had wiped it off and reloaded Win 7.

The 2nd time we attempted to install it, we had major issue with everything being really slow. The keyboard thing was not present..all worked fine but slow.

This time, it lost the CD/DVD but since we had problems earlier in the week, we were assuming that perhaps we had gotten a malware or something?

I like Win 8 I think enough to consider keeping it on (Hubby not completely sold but he agrees that it does seem to make things overall faster and if we could get the few kinks worked out, he could adjust.)

My thing is that there are several programs that came with our Acer that I liked. Of course, there were a lot of junk ones too.

I think I may attempt to reload Win 7 back on and then upgrade to Win 8.

The downgrade assistant says that the only issue we should have with what was installed with Win 7 was we need an update from HP from our printer...no big deal. And McAfee has to go...again no big deal.

I think that's not bad compatability, all things considered, right?

So, here's my game plan and I'm totally open to suggestions, tips and such.

Gonna try to reinstall Win 7 later in the week.

Before I load any of my software, I'd like to get rid of the junk stuff.

Is it safe to uninstall stuff like McAfee and some of those other internet programs that come preloaded?

Is there anything else that I should consider uninstalling that I may not know about?

Then, I'll load my software.

So, this is what we'd have - and I had run a Belarc Advisor to print out everything, so that helps.

Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010

The microsoft works version that came preloaded - yes, I do like some of the features that are with it.

I think all of the Cyber link things come with the webcam.

Egis Technology - Win Locker - I think this is an Acer feature - which I never used to store anything so if anyone thinks it would be safe to delete it, I'm game.

Then Belarc lists microsoft shell and explorer and other stuff - which I'm not touching with a 10 foot pole.

Acer Arcade Deluxe - which has dvd player, music media and some stuff with.

The Acer programs, assist, registration, recovery, updater and a Welcome Center.

Adobe stuff

Reader, shockwave - for 1 of the games I play.. online...don't laugh..Championship Figure skating.(I'm a roller and ice-skater, so it kinda makes sense)

Now, the quirky one that I had forgotten gave us some issues - Catalyst control Center.

Amazon kindle - actually downloaded - not preinstalled

AIM 7 - for a group chat (Older version but one that seems to work well for all of us ladies on the group)

Some Apple stuff that either came or got installed later as we did more - Quick Time and so forth

Arcsoft - which comes with our Kodak digital camera

There is a 2007 version of Microsoft office but since I bought 2010 version, would it be safe to remove that one?

skydrive

windows live stuff

NTI backup manager - which I just used for the 1st time recently and we've had our laptop since 2010 but I do like it.

Anytime Organizer
and then some scrapbooking, photo software

Wild Tangent games - came with and I have bejeweled versions and a few others that we like to play.

In addition, we have 2 different printers, both HP, that we use depending which room we are in - neither are wireless but both work fine under Win 8, just need one small update for the scanner one.

Webroot for our virus

I have an external backup hard-drive that I use as a USB drive rather than using their preinstalled software program. Comes in real handy when the computer has had issues, let me tell you.

We have 2 digital cameras - the fuji connects with a cable - the HP we use the card reader.

We have a Kodak digital recorder - has it's own software.

a Logitech mouse and keyboard because sometimes, I like the standard keyboard versus the laptop one and neither of us liked the mousepad on the laptop.

let's see..what other info would y'all need?

ok,

Acer Aspire model 7535-5020
the label says it has an AMD athlon 64 x2 processor but apparently Acer was big on putting alternatives in and not changing the labeling so we actually have a AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core 64 KB

it isn't hyper-threaded

ATI radeon graphics hd3200 series - which has caused us fits with the upgrade thing that sometimes pops up and says that it isn't up to date yet is a real pain to try to update and very confusing for me to determine which things to download to update when it does that.

it has 4GB memory, 320 GB HDD

DVD supermulti Dl drive

the HD is Hitachi (Belarc report labels it as healthy, LOL) - though I may run one again now that it is nude just to see what it comes up with, once I reinstall a printer tomorrow night.

And then, once everything is reinstalled and I know working,
I'd like to try the upgrade to Win 8, again.

So, my apologies for being long post, but I figure the more info one has - since you actually don't have the laptop in front of you, the more help you can provide.

We sincerely appreciate it! It hasn't been the 1st time that we've visited these sites and I can't tell you how grateful I am that you all are here. Love reading the information and checking things out.

Ii like learning new stuff, despite the headaches, and you never know when you are going to come across something really useful so again, Thank you to all who participate here!!!!

I'll check back later in the week and see what advice and all any of you has to throw out at us and we'll go from there.

Thanks again and everyone have a beautiful week!!!!!

alas, no..when we upgraded to win 8 it either vanished or became hidden or something. We had tried to just the upgrade with Win 8 - with keeping personal settings and all.

Not sure what hit the darn thing, but hubby is now believing that perhaps some of the survey sites that we signed up for earlier last week in an attempt to earn some extra cash/points/gift cards (because both of us had work hours reduced lately) might have snuck something in the back door

rather than it being mostly a Win 8 problem.

Makes me kind of glad to hear that because I'm still thinking that Win 8 will be really nice to have, once we get used to it and can get everything up and working with no glitches.

He's now saying that whatever makes me happy and whatever makes the laptop run the best that it can will be good enough for him, LOL.

Bless his heart, He thinks that I'm like Scotty or Geordi and can perform miracles on warp engines, uhm er....computers.

Little does he know that it is people like you all who have contributed to my learning.

Oh, I know what else I wanted to inquire about too

I've seen things about creating a mirror image of your system, which I am assuming is different from using the recovery discs to repair/reinstall and is, it seems from reading - perhaps a much better way to recover your system when problems arise?

I would love more information on this topic, have never done and obviously, don't know what I'd need or how to do but think this would be a good thing?

Also, can I create one for win 7 once I have Win 7 completely back to the way I like and then can I also create one for Win 8 once we have it the way we want?

And then, say we would be running Win 8 and decide to go back to Win 7, would we be able to use that mirror image in the event it would be needed or would we have to create a new one if we'd ever go back to Win 7?

thanks again for all!!!!

terazbox said:

I've seen things about creating a mirror image of your system, which I am assuming is different from using the recovery discs to repair/reinstall and is, it seems from reading - perhaps a much better way to recover your system when problems arise?

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Joe's suggestion above regarding using Acronis is a good one. Been using it for years and have always found it a satisfactory product. And his comment about a second / external (USB since it's a laptop) drive is essential to host the image archive files.
Keeping a current disk image is a strong and reliable way to recover to a point in time following most disasters.
But... it sounds a bit like you may suspect that you have another issue, a possible persistent infection perhaps? And..... it is really not too clear as to your present condition with respect to your computer's condition. And you keep referring to "Recovery Disks" are these disks provided by the manufacturer or something you made when you first purchased the Computer?
Is the computer running?
How is it running? (Fine, slow, extremely well or very strangely)
What operating system is it presently hosting?
And regarding the list of Software you are planning to install. Please take your time and consider your needs and only install what you need immediately and only one or two at a time to assess the machines stability. Also examine your available hard drive space as with some of the things you have described above may have resulted in some pretty large folders with names like "Windows.OLD" which can consume a lot of real estate and may also contain some important files (docs, pictures, music, etc.,) from previous installation.
Catch us up on your current situation as briefly and succinctly as you can. And to what extent you may need more help going forward.
Regards
Randy

terazbox said:

Oh, I know what else I wanted to inquire about too

I've seen things about creating a mirror image of your system, which I am assuming is different from using the recovery discs to repair/reinstall and is, it seems from reading - perhaps a much better way to recover your system when problems arise?

I would love more information on this topic, have never done and obviously, don't know what I'd need or how to do but think this would be a good thing?

Also, can I create one for win 7 once I have Win 7 completely back to the way I like and then can I also create one for Win 8 once we have it the way we want?

And then, say we would be running Win 8 and decide to go back to Win 7, would we be able to use that mirror image in the event it would be needed or would we have to create a new one if we'd ever go back to Win 7?

thanks again for all!!!!

Click to expand...

I would not use the Windows built-in imaging. It is known to be low function and often it did not work when you needed to recover.

A rock solid alternative is free Macrium. Here is a little tutorial I mad on how to deal with it. It works for Windows 8 just as well as for /7, Vista and XP.

Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Help Forums

For the WinPE recovery CD, I suggest you download the .iso from my Skydrive and burn that to CD. Saves you at least 2 hours to download the WAIK.

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=475a...cid=475A0A48CA6D4035&id=475A0A48CA6D4035!1812

Hey all!
Thanks for everyone's advice.

To answer all the questions,

the recovery discs are the ones that we made when we first purchased the computer as Acer provided no discs to recover your computer, just what was installed on it and, of course, the recommendation that you create your own set.

I actually made 2 sets.

Yes, we were wondering if we got bit by something, internet - at times, would load a familiar page really slow and other times, bam - you were there. We also had a lot of freezing going on, things becoming unresponsive and then taking forever to become responsive.

(The printer, office, internet, and windows media player were the big ones)

Also would sometimes see a small black box appear - rather quickly, in the top left corner but it always went so fast, you couldn't catch what it said.

Certain games were becoming very sluggish as well. And the mouse would sometimes not move on the screen where you would want it to go. We put several sets of batteries in it the other week, but maybe it wasn't the batteries?

I think there were some other things that hubby experienced, but since he is at work, I can't pick his brain.

As I said earlier, I've always kept backup of all our files, documents, photos, downloaded music (not what we have on CD cause we change our playlists every so often and don't keep a lot of music actually stored on the laptop other than the downloaded stuff that we want to listen to a lot. Plus, we like different styles of music, so we each keep our own stuff on separate flash drives.

At the most, I think our hard drive only ever got down to about 260 or 250 or so free space available, so I didn't think that was too much but then again, what do I know?

I'd be interested in learning more about how do you keep the things on separate - is it partitions, to be technically correct?

Does that help the computer run better and, of course, help keep things more tidy and efficient?

I have no clue how you do that, LOL but if it seems like a good alternative to keeping things good, I'm open to learning more.

Yes, re-installing everything is such a long process. Acquire all of the Win 7 updates, let
them configure the computer and then go about installing all of the software....Hours...yuck.

I like the sound of getting things back up, if something goes bad, quickly.

When I get to putting the sofware back on, I usually do it a few things at a time. Then, I've usnally, shut down the computer, turneed it back on, see if there are updates and then do a clean disc and maybe a defrag before heading on to installing more.

Is that good practice?


I was going to try reinstaling win 7 tonite but, I think I shall await further response from you all.

I guess that would be best if I decide to separate things on the hard drive? Assuming you would want to get that set up as early as possible, rather than after you've gone and reinstalled a bunch of stuff?

Plus, once I start, I won't have access to the internet until after we get everything back in and I'm afraid that if I come up with a question, I'll have to figure it out on my own and possibly do something backwards that I shouldn't.

Don't want that now, do we?
If you need more info from me, I'll be happy to provide what I

can.

Thanks again everyone!!!

Ok,
so I've got the laptop back up and running with Win 7 at the moment.

A few things I'm questioning but you all may tell me that it is all normal and no worries. I'm off to assemble that little list and info and will post back here shortly.

Okay,
so 1st up - the Windows Experience thing.
This is what I have at the moment.

Processor - 4.8
Memory (RAM) - 5.4
Graphics - 2.9
Gaming Graphics - 5.1
Primary Hard disk - 5.7

Before all this nonsense happened, we had a 3.2 on the Graphics. Not much of a difference from the 2.9, but is it a big deal?
If someone can enlighten me on that, would be appreciated.

Now, I'm off to gather info to make a post regarding the drives. Will post that in a bit.

terazbox said:

Okay,
so 1st up - the Windows Experience thing.
This is what I have at the moment.

Processor - 4.8
Memory (RAM) - 5.4
Graphics - 2.9
Gaming Graphics - 5.1
Primary Hard disk - 5.7

Before all this nonsense happened, we had a 3.2 on the Graphics. Not much of a difference from the 2.9, but is it a big deal?
If someone can enlighten me on that, would be appreciated.

Now, I'm off to gather info to make a post regarding the drives. Will post that in a bit.

Click to expand...

My best guess would be that you are not (after this fresh install) using the most current driver for your video card. My suggestion would be to check with your computer manufacturer's website and download that video driver and install it and see if that picks you back up to your former stat.
It might help if we knew some of the specs on this laptop..... Manufacturer, Model Name, Model Number and any other assorted information you'd like to share.
Regards
Randy

OK,
1st up - my apologies to Randy..after so many posts in regards to my troubled laptop, I thought I had given specs earlier, but anyhow
This brat is an Acer Aspire 7535-5020. It is labeled as having an AMD Athalon 64 x 2 processor BUT she doesn't. Apparently, a lot of other Acer's out there came with either the Athalon or the AMD Turion X2 - Dual Core. Our brat has the Turion.
She has an ATI Radeon HD3200 graphic
4 GB memory
320 GB HDD
and anything else you want to know about her, I will happily provide or attempt to provide.
Personally, I doubt the Acer site will have anything useful... the last time I checked, I couldn't find any updates for our laptop but then again, I may need a lesson on how to search for what we would need? I am so dumb when it comes to this stuff.
Next question up concerns the hard drive.
I had started loading stuff back on her and so far, no troubles. But, I noticed that on the C Drive, I only have 229.92 GB out of 286.27 GB free. And I'm not done installing the software that we use. We used to hover around 270 free and that was even with some of our photos and documents and such.
Also noticed when I went to run the clean disk that I have 2 other drives.
This is the info that I can provide - courtesy of the Computer Management Windows.
1st drive listed has no volume name. Layout - Simple, Type - Basic, File system - nothing listed, Status - Healthy (Recovery Partition), Capacity 11.72 GB 100% free space, Fault Tolerance - NO.
Next drive listed -
Volume - Acer ( c) , layout - simple, type - basic, File System - NTFS, Status - Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition), capacity 286.27 GB, free - 229.92, Fault tolerance - no
next drive
Volume - System Reserved, layout - simple, type - basic, File system - NTFS, Status (Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition) Capacity 100 MB, free space 66 MB

what does all of this mean? Will I have enough room to continue adding our software and storing documents and such?
Again, any advice or educations offered will be happily accepted!!!
Thanks again!!!!!

oh, on the above - it was disc defrag when i noticed the other drives and NO, I did not defrag them, just the C drive.
Hope that didn't confuse anyone.

terazbox said:

Personally, I doubt the Acer site will have anything useful... the last time I checked, I couldn't find any updates for our laptop but then again, I may need a lesson on how to search for what we would need? I am so dumb when it comes to this stuff.

Click to expand...

Go here Link Removed
Assuming you are in the US and plug in Notebook->Aspire->Aspire 7535-> and your operating system I assume is Windows 7 64bit otherwise you're wasting a gig of ram, but I could be wrong. Then scroll down to VGA and grab that ATI driver and install it.

well duh

a VGA

I have to confess, I never realized that was something I should be looking for. It is currently downloading the file. Will update you later as to what happens.

See? I learn something new every day.

Regarding all those stats for your hard drive. those are pretty much what I would normally expect to see. So no worries.
And that recovery partition is the partition talked about earlier in this thread to recover your PC to factory condition.

How to recovery your system from bootup

1. Locate the Alt key, to the left of the space bar, and F10, on the top row of keys.
2. Power the system on.
3. When the system is powered on, tap the Alt and F10 keys together at the same time when the Acer splash screen appears.
   It should state "Please wait a moment..." with the Acer logo in the upper left hand corner.
4. At the eRecovery Management menu it will ask you how to restore.
5. Click on the restore option you would like to use.

Click to expand...

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Holy Mountain Dew!

that graphics number just jumped up to a 3.9!!!

Wow!!!

Now, I wonder if I should be looking at installing any of those other drivers listed there for our model? And, if so, guess I would have to determine which ones actually apply, right?

Sending many thanks out to ya for that tip!!!!!! How awesome!!!!!

I guess I can always run the Belarc again and see what other items match up to the drivers listed?

I have to confess that I had seen the line at the top of the drivers saying that the list was drivers not contained in this system and I always thought...need to stay away from those, they don't match our laptop criteria.

maybe they were really saying that those drivers are newer, therefore not contained in the system as it came to us???

Call me a goofy blonde if that was the case