Imaging and Restoring PQSERVICE Partition !?

ounce · 11 Aug 2014

I've made an image of the PQSERVICE Partition of my emachines E442-V133 using Macrium Reflect and stored it in an external hard drive.

If I use Diskpart to clean the entire disk, create a new partition, and apply the image to that newly created partition, will it work properly like the original PQSERVICE Partition?

Will I be able to boot into this "reincarnation" of the original PQSERVICE?

(After that, I plan to create 2 more partitions, 1 primary for OS and 1 extended for storage.)

Thanks.

Kaktussoft · 11 Aug 2014

It won't work!! The hot-key that forces boot to PQSERVICE isn't there anymore. It's in the harddrives MBR normally.
You better forget the whole PQSERVICE thing! Why would you ever reload the factory settings? Make image backups instead.

If you really need it (I can't imagine why): http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer...re-option.html

gregrocker · 11 Aug 2014

You'll always have a vastly better install by doing what most tech enthusiasts do to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. Everything needed to get and keep a perfect install is in the blue link..

If you have some other reason you want the factory image and didn't make your Recovery Disks, you can try booting the Recovery partition by creating a temporary Dual Boot for this purpose as shown in Boot Recovery Partition using EasyBCD

mjf · 13 Aug 2014

ounce said:

Will I be able to boot into this "reincarnation" of the original PQSERVICE?

Yes depending on how the ACER PQSERVICE has been set up. If the partition has a bootmgr and a BOOT folder then you should be ok.
(1) You can make the partition active to boot into it from the BIOS then make it non active afterwards and make sure the system reserved partition generated is marked the active partition.
(2) Alternatively boot to a Hirens Boot CD and it allows you to boot directly into the partition without making it active. A bit of trial and error may be required to pick the right partition I think it is the 2nd partition listed when using Hirens.

I've done this successfully on an older ACER desktop (ASPIRE 1800). Imaged the PQSERVICE using Macrium do an image restore to a brand new HDD and the factory restore went fine.