How do i recover my computer to original settings and drivers?

Private1stClass · 12-09-2010, 12:20 AM

ok heres my problem.. i have an acer aspire 6930, originally running vista 64. well my buddy took off vista, as well as all the drivers, and replaced them with xp and a bunch of drivers he found over the web. and xp is not validated now.
well since this happened a couple years back, a lot of the drivers have become incompatible, and completely destroyed themselves, or eachother.
the dvd rom wont read the system disk, or the recovery disks. i went to the acer website and tried to download the factory drivers. i tried changing the BIOS on startup, as well and setting back to default config. ive tried doing a system restore up to 8 months ago, but the drivers were switched out about 2 1/2 years ago, so no luck there.
if there is a different way to completely wipe my system back to original settings and original drivers, thatd be great. but if not, just help me fix my system!

GZ · 12-09-2010, 12:46 AM

Hello Private1stClass, and welcome to TSF,

There are a few methods you can use to restore the computer to it's factory settings.

If your computer's recovery partition is still intact, you may be able to force it to boot. This may or may not work. I have been successful in the past with some Acer recovery partitions.

If you have a factory restore DVD, you may or may not be able to install Vista from a USB drive. That would depend on if the restore disc is a Vista install disc, or a factory image disc.

If the DVD rom is not reading the discs (from boot) then your drive is either failed, or your discs are not bootable. If it is a factory restore disc, it should be bootable. You can test this by booting another computer from the disc.