Hey, guys. A friend has an ACER Aspire 5349 that he bought new. He dropped it yesterday, and it won't boot. It has Windows 7 Home. I think maybe a 320 G HDD....don't know how much RAM. There is no obvious physical damage to the laptop, so it must not have fallen far.
When you start the computer, and let it go past the BIOS, it states: A Disk Read Error Occurred...press control-alt-delete to reboot. You can go into the Bios..and the boot program shows the HDD. I put a Linux Puppy disc into the drive, and it boots and loads into the memory fine, and can access (apparently all) the files on the HDD.
I had made a disc image of this drive a few months ago using EaseUS, and saved it to an external drive. The owner can't find the boot CD I made at the same time. I did try my WinXP EaseUS disc, and the CD works a minute and then halts at a blue screen. So, I don't know if you have to have the EaseUS disc made specifically for a Windows 7. However, just to see if anything will boot up the HDD, I put in a Windows XP Pro (the latest windows disc I have). It refuses to boot up to the XP setup program. The CD drive just works for a short time, and then everything stops at a blue screen and a flashing cursor.
So...to my question. Is there a program I can download to write to a CD that is supposed to boot and possibly repair a Windows 7 bootloader (or whatever is needed)? I have run into roadblocks all over the net....everybody thinks when you are looking for a Win 7 boot disc, you are trying to cheat poor Microsoft. The owner does not have any of the original paperwork or startup discs...I think the ACER restore is probably on a partition on the HDD. And do you think the HDD is physically ruined? I thought so at first, but the BIOS can see it, and Linux can access virtually all the files, so it sounds to me like just the boot information is gone. I would take the HDD out, and try another one I have in there, but so far I have been unable to find a (free) downloadable set of instructions on how to access that drive. You apparently have to remove the entire back of the laptop but I would like to know if there are any cautions about doing that. If another drive will boot up, I can install that image I had put on the external drive, and he would be good to go.
Thanks.
When you start the computer, and let it go past the BIOS, it states: A Disk Read Error Occurred...press control-alt-delete to reboot. You can go into the Bios..and the boot program shows the HDD. I put a Linux Puppy disc into the drive, and it boots and loads into the memory fine, and can access (apparently all) the files on the HDD.
I had made a disc image of this drive a few months ago using EaseUS, and saved it to an external drive. The owner can't find the boot CD I made at the same time. I did try my WinXP EaseUS disc, and the CD works a minute and then halts at a blue screen. So, I don't know if you have to have the EaseUS disc made specifically for a Windows 7. However, just to see if anything will boot up the HDD, I put in a Windows XP Pro (the latest windows disc I have). It refuses to boot up to the XP setup program. The CD drive just works for a short time, and then everything stops at a blue screen and a flashing cursor.
So...to my question. Is there a program I can download to write to a CD that is supposed to boot and possibly repair a Windows 7 bootloader (or whatever is needed)? I have run into roadblocks all over the net....everybody thinks when you are looking for a Win 7 boot disc, you are trying to cheat poor Microsoft. The owner does not have any of the original paperwork or startup discs...I think the ACER restore is probably on a partition on the HDD. And do you think the HDD is physically ruined? I thought so at first, but the BIOS can see it, and Linux can access virtually all the files, so it sounds to me like just the boot information is gone. I would take the HDD out, and try another one I have in there, but so far I have been unable to find a (free) downloadable set of instructions on how to access that drive. You apparently have to remove the entire back of the laptop but I would like to know if there are any cautions about doing that. If another drive will boot up, I can install that image I had put on the external drive, and he would be good to go.
Thanks.