[HELP] Laptop got reformatted. Starting from scratch again.

I've encountered a problem with my laptop that I needed to take it to a service center. It wouldn't boot and the technician said that it would need to be reformatted. After reformatting it's now working but my Recovery Partition that came with my laptop when I bought it got reformatted as well. The Recovery Partition is now showing "unallocated space." So it means that I can no longer reinstall or reformat my laptop should I need to because the recovery partition is now gone. And my OS is now Windows 7 6.1.7600 when it used to be 7601 SP1 with my Recovery Partition.

1. How do I get the Recovery Partition back that came with my laptop (Acer Aspire 4752, Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit)?
2. Where do I download the files and how do I put them all back to my hard drive? There used to be a 100MB 'System Reserved' partition and 15GB Recovery Partition on my hard drive but now both are showing 'unallocated space' due to the reformatting done at the service center.

I hope someone can help me with my problem. Thank you so much in advance.

Can you even boot your machine now, after whatever your service tech did to the drive?

The "system reserved" partition is typically where Boot Manager lives, and it is marked as "active" so that's where the BIOS would go to start the whole boot process. From there, your installed Windows on C is identified and the rest of the Windows startup continues.

If you "system reserved" partition is still there, does it still show "active"? Or does your C-partition now show it to be the "active" partition? Can you currently boot? What did your service tech actually do to your drive, and did he give it back to you in some kind of working condition or not?

If for some reason he erased the contents of both the "system reserved" and "recovery" partitions, you're not going to get them back (unless you'd been taking "system image" backups say to an external USB drive) for your own protection. But without some partition being "active" and containing Boot manager, I don't see how you could actually now be booting to Windows at all?

And if he erased those other two partitions, what did he do in your primary C-partition? How did he get Windows there and operational and bootable?


Is your problem that you now can't boot? Or can you actually boot but you want to reinstall all the 3rd-party software you once had before he did whatever he did? Not to mention all the drivers your machine needs for its hardware, which originally came from Acer.

If he somehow and for some reason replaced your C-partition with a straight Win7 rather than Win7 + SP1, you can still apply SP1 yourself (although it's a lengthy and time consuming process) through Windows Update. But of course you'll first have to have a working Win7 system.

Please post a full-screen screenshot from either DISKMGMT.MSC or Partition Wizard of your hard drive. Please spread the columns so we can see all the text in each cell.

I'd certainly ask for a full explanation from your service tech about what he did to your machine, and how he expected you to deal with what he gave you back when it was returned.

Yes, I can boot my machine now. It's now working fine. What the service tech did was he reformatted my laptop's whole hard drive and installed a generic Windows 7 OS instead of the OEM version that came with it that was on a Recovery partition. The System Reserved and Recovery partitions are both reformatted as well; they're both now showing unallocated space on Disk management. The active partition now is the drive C:. I don't have a system image backup. Is it possible to get all the Recovery partition files back for my specific unit or download them somewhere? I can download the drivers from Acer website anytime. It's the Recovery partition or the Windows 7 installation itself that I badly need 'cause I don't have any other way but to go to the service center again should something wrong happens again that needs reformatting or reinstalling Windows. Also, is SP1 available in Windows Update or do I need to download the whole OS? Thank you so much for the reply.

fabbriche said:

Yes, I can boot my machine now. It's now working fine. What the service tech did was he reformatted my laptop's whole hard drive and installed a generic Windows 7 OS instead of the OEM version that came with it that was on a Recovery partition. The System Reserved and Recovery partitions are both reformatted as well; they're both now showing unallocated space on Disk management. The active partition now is the drive C:.

I understand.

Incidentally, when posting a screenshot from DISKMGMT it's important to spread the columns (especially "status") so that we can see all the text in these cells. In particular, unless you had told us that it was C which was active that would not have been obvious. Of course the fact that the 101MB unallocated space (which used to be the active "system reserved" partition on the original drive) was "unallocated" implied it would not have been "active" and containing Boot Manager. Nevertheless...

I don't have a system image backup. Is it possible to get all the Recovery partition files back for my specific unit or download them somewhere?

Don't fret. Just use Macrium Reflect and create your own "system image" on an external USB drive (which you really should have anyway, for regular "system image" and "data" backups). If you have disaster problems in the future you'll want to restore from a very recent working backup anyway, not go all the way back to "factory" and have to reinstall everything all over again not to mention perform hundreds of Windows Updates.

So, since you're now way back at ground zero, I'd take a current "system image". Then I'd apply Windows Updates to the point where you can then apply SP1. Take another image before doing the SP1 update. Then you'll have another few hundred Windows Updates after that. Again, take a final "gold" update, which is your new starting point in the future. Now you can begin installing 3rd-party software and completing the rest of your customization. Again, when you're done take another "image" (and you might take additional images along the way, just for comfort's sake).

Also, is SP1 available in Windows Update or do I need to download the whole OS? Thank you so much for the reply.

As I recall, you can't just apply SP1 until at least a fair number of preliminary Windows Updates are applied to the original Win7 which is what you currently have. Then, SP1 is one large download/update. And once you reach that point, there's a whole next set of several hundred additional updates to apply to get you current.

Note that you since it is now C which is the "active" partition where Boot Manager lives (along with Windows itself), you might as well use Partition Wizard to absorb the two unallocated spaces into either C, or to the adjacent D. No need to have those empty spaces. Again, "system image" on an external USB backup drive of your operational current system is far more valuable and useful than having a "recovery partition" to get you back to factory.

And for full backup, you should also either "image" the additional data partitions, or for maximum recovery convenience you can use the folder/file "data" backup capability of either non-free Macrium Reflect Standard or some other product (e.g. NovaBACKUP, etc.).