Vista after Win 7

B

bkk123

Member
Hi,

I have an Acer TM4720 that came with pre installed Vista and no installation / restoration Cd's (which I created using the Acer system tools). Acer keeps 10Gb on a hidden partition storing all system tools etc'.

Few months ago I installed Win 7 Enterprise and wasn't very happy with it. I have decided to revert back to the original Vista. The restoration CD didn’t work. Capt having an error msg popping as soon as the system tried to restore.

I took a win XP installation CD booted the Acer with it. The XP couldn't see the HD so couldn't install.

I tried the same with WIN 7 installation CD and this 1 can see the HD... I used this CD to delete the 100 Mb partition, and tried again the original restoration CD's. Now restoration started and worked fine - only to the point where back up was supposed to be written to the HD...

I tried booting the computer with Dos and other HD utilities - all failed to see the HD. Somehow and for some reason, WIN 7 makes the HD invisible to all other OS's. I read somewhere that I should try to copy the original MBR from the hidden 10Gb partition, but again, as the main partition is not visible to the OS in use, this can't be done...

oh, BTW, during all the tests, trials and errors, I deleted the WIN 7 partition, so I can’t start the WIN 7 at all.

Not that I think Vista is superior to win 7, but I really need to restore it ... Any ideas? How can I make the HD visible again to ALL OS's??
 
Win 7

The problem is not in the restoration disks - it is some changes that win7 doing to the HD so it is not recognised by any other system.
 
W7 isn't making your HDD invisible.
Probably your XP is old (pre SP2 ?) and doesn't have SATA support.
 
Ok, you said you can boot with Windows 7 install disc, correct?

Go ahead and boot from the disc and go to command prompt:

diskpart
list disk
select disk x
clean
exit
exit

Now try performing a recovery.
 
can't get to command prompt while booting from the installation CD... And if going on command line from WIN7 itself it doesn't allow to clean the partition that holds the system files...
trying now to recover deleted partition... hnoping to get this way to the original partition with the Vista although I doubt I can as I have delted and created the partion few times while trying to get this work...
 
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