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We got a new Acer laptop with Vista installed at work. As it's getting ready to go out in the field, we wanted to do a burn-in test on it. We made the recovery DVDs before we ran the test. Part of the burn-in was bonnie++, which does a destructive read/write test of the hard drive.

The machine passed with flying colors, but after trying to boot to the recovery DVD to being re-installing the system, the machine began to try PXE boot after a while. After doing some googling, it appears these 'recovery' disks expect a certain recovery partition to exist on the hard drive, and are in fact not bootable at all, and are useless in absence of the recovery partition.

Is this the case, and is this "The Way Things Are" with all PC manufacturers and Windows Vista+ nowadays? How do I get my hands on actual bootable DVDs?

I've emailed Acer support. I see an option on their site to purchase recovery disks, but I have the suspicion that these are the same non-bootable disks that I burned on the new system. Will Acer provide actual boot disks?

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You could try getting your hands on a normal Vista installation disk which has the same version as the recovery disks. Try inputting the serial code that came with your laptop. This doesn't always work, but it's worth trying. The serial code is usually found at the bottom of your laptop.

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    Has worked for me with XP in several cases. I usually create a GHOST image before any testing or recovery attempts. That always works
    – Dave M
    May 20, 2010 at 19:52
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Go to Acer chat and then request the recovery discs. If you are covered under the standard limited warranty then will receive them for free just like I did.

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