my daughter brought her laptop round today saying widows crashed. after running many prog trying to clean it up i decided to re install windows 7.
but when i get to choose hard drive it shows disk 0 18gb saying oem reserved
so i followed your guide and get to list disk it says
Disk 0 online 18gb
Disk 1 invalid 299gb
then i cant get any further
Digging in beyond the published system specs we find that the model does have a 20gb SSD caching ship on the mobo, which would explain the 18gb good disk Diskpart reported: Acer Aspire S3-391 53314G52ADD Replacing the MSATA ssd? - Aspire - Laptop Tech Support That thread actually has the user installing the OS to the SSD which we've helped do on 30gb MSATA but never on one that small - though it obviously can be done.
The hard disk may be failing. Test it with the maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan. You can see the HD make by accessing it as shown in Taking apart Acer Aspire S3-391-6497 >> Inside my laptop or googling any serial for it listed in BIOS setup tabs.
If unable to find HD make use Seagate Seatools ISO burned to CD with Windows Image Burner, booted to run the full scan.
If it tests OK then work through the steps to Troubleshoot Windows 7 Installation Failures - Windows 7 Help Forum
If the disk has failed replace it to do a Clean Reinstall Windows 7. The best upgrade one can do nowadays is an SSD which is lightning fast, faster than buying a high end laptop without one.
Be aware that the Office Starter has been discontinued and we no longer even have access to a legacy download for it. But it can be replaced by free Open Office if you don't have another Office key available.
all sorted. first i installed linux which found the 300gb hdd , that all installed well, then i just installed windows 7 to partition 1 not touching the 18gb reserved
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