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Thanks, Terry, for the clarifications.
One of the things I noted in my first post, that I didn't mention in my long post on September 15th, was that I had installed a Linux distribution (Robolinux) to the (renamed) PQSERVICE partition at the beginning of the drive, and specified that the installer not write to the MBR, but only to the PBR (Partition Boot Record). Upon booting after the install, I was shown the Grub boot menu (when I had expected the Windows boot menu). This occurrence also leads me to believe that the BIOS on my Acer is not jumping to the MBR (which would have shown the Windows boot menu, judging from the how the Hirens BootCD 15.2 has worked). Instead, it jumped to the PBR of PQSERVICE, which now contained the Grub boot menu I had installed there. That's why I was greeted with the Grub boot menu, as I don't believe the MBR was ever accessed. Using Hirens BootCD 15.2, I jumped to the MBR, and booted correctly. At least, that is my best guess!
As you pointed out, when I used the CD to boot, it found the Neosmart files that I had created on my C: drive with EasyBCD, and displayed the menu I had designed. I indeed could boot from there either to Windows 7 or to Robolinux. To me, it all makes sense if Acer has used a custom BIOS that doesn't work the way other BIOS's do. Changing bits in the MBR depending on what it finds in PQSERVICE sounds a bit non-standard to me, too, but I could be wrong on that.
Thanks again!
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September 19, 2015
