Troubles making a Recovery USB

I have just tried to make a recovery USB and I got the Error 39 message. Tried a different USB stick and still got the Error 39. I now cannot boot my desktop into XP. It comes up with a windows disk configuration error. So it looks as if my Acer One recovery disk has trashed my XP install.

I have lost all my data on my XP PC just for following Acer's instructions. There must be a case for compensation..........

Chris.

 

Re: trashing hard drives during 'Create a Recovery USB Device'

Yep, same problem! I selected the USB stick on the Recovery menu afair, got an error message, and then found it had killed the MBR of (luckily) my backup hard drive and half its file table too. For what it's worth, if you're looking for the lost data, try finding copies of 'Partition Table Doctor' and 'EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard' - you might be able to recover something (I got one partition back complete but didn't waste time trying to recover the other half as I knew it had nothing of great value in it).

I'm going to try the USB recovery thing with both hard drives disconnected, but I suspect it'll go looking to make a RAM disk somewhere and will fail - I'll post back if I succeed.

I've avoided Acer tech support as I assume it's no such thing in reality - is anyone thinking of trying legal action against them for this damage to remote computers? There's certainly no warning whatsoever on the instruction sheet and this is quite literally a fatal flaw in thier software.

 

OK - to add to the post above...

Formatted a 2Gb USB stick as FAT32.
Turned off desktop and disconnected both hard drive data cables.
Re-booted with Recovery DVD and USB stick in the PC - the DVD booted and offered up the right options.
Selected the USB and got Error 39.
Let the system re-boot and went through the select USB stick thing again, and it appeared to install.
Went away for cup of coffee (about 30 mins to transfer)
Came back to an error message saying it couldn't continue, but status bar said 100%.
USB stick has (apparently) 2.7Gb of data on a 2Gb drive and 84,400-odd files
Don't know whether this will work, so waiting for an external USB DVD drive just in case.

Seems the Recovery DVD has trashed lots of hard drives - what you do to disconnect a HD in a laptop to preserve it, I don't know.

 

hi there, just to add another "voice" to the crowd, i had exact same problem.
with the last live update i got my desktop messed up, battery status icon disappeared, usb sticks wont mount unless i do it manually... and a couple others.
so i decided to try and recover the sistem.
cd started, let me select the options... error 39, now my secondary hd is not initialized and doesnt show up in explorer.
i managed to find the files in the hard drive with a recover program (r-studio) but its a demo, anyone knows a free one that really works?
then i called the customer service and theytook forever to understand what the issue was, but in the end the guy tells me that he always tells people to disconnect the hard drives before trying to create the usb stick for recovery.... now why dont yall just write that in big yellow letters on the cd!!!
i was so mad!

now i have to still figure out a way to recover the system on my aa1 and thenfind a way to get my files back.... 70 gb of family pictures.

thanks.

 

You could use something like this to recover the partition table on that drive ...

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Good luck!

Cheers.

 

Hi

I tried to create a recovery USB on my XP desktop PC and followed the instructions given by Acer. I selected my USB drive and followed the on screen instructions till it told me I had finished.
I then re booted my desk top after have changed the BIOS setting to my HDD. All I get is the blue Acer Aspire One screen. I have tried Safe Boot, I have tried Booting from XP cd but all I get is the same Aspire screen. It seems as though my PC is dead.

Phoned Acer support, they tell me I must have loaded the recovery onto my Desktop PC and sorry there is nothing they can do.

Any help please !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hi

Well I have eventually rebuilt my XP Desktop PC. I had to download 6 floppy discs worth of reinstall XP data from microsoft and fortunately I was still able to boot from floppy. I could not recover from any other drive on the PC. I was also fortunate that I regularly back up my data but none the less did loose about a weeks worth of change files.

Acer give a method of creating a Linpus recovery USB on any XP PC but I do not remeber any selection to write to your PC. I chose the USB drive which on my PC was "I" and that was what the Acer procedure identified and I selected. Tomorrow I will check the options on the Acer recovery from USB again.

IF ANYBODY TRIES TO CARRY OUT THE SAME PROCEDURE AGAIN BE VERY VERY CAREFUL AND ENSURE YOU DISCONNECT YOUR HDD AS A PREVIOUS POSTER SAYS THEY WERE TOLD TO DO BY ACER.

 

Just another record of experience. After encountering problems writing a working recovery USB, I finally went out an bought a 2Gb Cruzer and it all worked fine. It seems that the image may not quite fit on a 1Gb. It used up 965Meg on my working USB drive. My (supposedly) 1Gb drive only has 962Meg of space on it.
Also, the default option on the DVD is to install to the local hard drive. When you boot from DVD, you have 100 seconds in which you must select an option. If you don't, it will attempt to install to the local hard drive, which will probably trash your PC. When selecting an option, ensure that you pick the correct drive to make the copy onto. It shows the size of the drives, so you can work out which is the USB drive, but again the default is (normally, but not always!) to install to the local hard drive. This software almost seems to be designed as a trap!

 

I noticed the DVDROM doesn't like many of the HP/Compaq computer dvdrom drives at my work. I eventually got it to work on a HP tower.

I also had to have the USB drive plugged in while the cdrom started up.