Dual Boot Issue w WinXP and Acer eRecovery Utillity, Advice appreciated.

[xroox]

Hey I have sort of a specific problem with my acer aspire one, it's really only coincidence that I had fedora installed, but I have had no help on the acer aspire one forum so I thought I would try here where people might be a little more used to dual-booting.

My problem is that I want to install a fresh copy of windows because it has gotten slow and laggy, and I want to give the computer to my younger sister since I just bought a new computer.

And so, I removed GRUB boot loader by fixmbr using a dos boot disk on usb, so that I could run the acer erecovery software which keeps a fresh copy of xp installed on a separate partition for reinstallation of windows.

However, even with GRUB gone, and windows booting directly, the erecovery won't start, it just boots back up into windows even if I have run the erecovery program which prompts the restart.

I'm just not sure where to go from here, I can clean up windows and my other option would be to remove windows completely and just use fedora, but I like the idea of still having that erecovery partition on it since there is no optical drive on the computer.

Any thoughts as to why the eRecovery isn't starting up? I know this is kind of particular but I would love to hear any thoughts. Thanks.

[ryptyde]

This is one possible way to reinstall XP and that would be to get a external DVD writer create install/recovery discs and verify that they work. Get a copy of DBAN (Dariks Boot And Nuke) and use unetbootin from Linux or Windows and install dban to a usb device. Boot the usb with dban and wipe the drive, it takes a long time if you use the DoD default method but the drive will be "cleaned". Then when dban is finished take the install/recovery disc and reinstall XP and thats all that will be left on the drive is XP.

I have used this method on the AAO and two other Acer laptops.

[zackf]

DBAN will get the job done, but you really don't have to sanitize your HDD unless you're worried about your sister forensically recovering your pr0n. Is the recovery partition your only option? If so you can add it to the windows boot file I bet, but if you have a disk lying around you can put it on a flash drive.

http://lifehacker.com/5347382/wintof...ased-installer