Testing Recovery scenarios on Acer TravelMate 8106

I did it, that is messing up my system completely and having to do a recovery.
Since every disadvantage creates its own advantages, this was a good moment to try Acer's utilities first, before putting back a ghost snapshot of my system.
Warning: Don’t try this at home, since a lot may be series, model or even system specific.

My system:
TravelMate 8106WLMI with XPPro
System CD for Travel Mate 8100 series rev. 6.0 P/N: SD.TAL03.006
Recovery CDs for 8100 series P/N: RD.T7207.022

Don't do this if there is no need, unless you are as boneheaded as me!!!

The recovery process follows this path (each following step after a reboot)
1. Loading a FAT32 disk image on the first partition (second if hidden recovery partition is still present)
2. Loading patches (drivers and some utils specific for you model)
Note: it looks for a file named preload.tag in your C:\ root-directory to decide if it needs to do step 1 or step 2
3. Loading windows and running the mini-activation (asking for some basic user details) (after this your windows is activated, and C:\SYSPREP is deleted)
In the recovery environment (scenario 3 below), it decides that it is time for step 3 by running
Acer\tools\Mbrwrdos -unhideext
Acer\tools\Mbrwrdos –checkkey
(the last one disables you to use Alt-F10)
4. Loading windows after which the Acer Launch tool applies the patches and installs the drivers (the tool may restart itself a few times).
Note: do not interrupt it! And don’t mess with the Bluetooth and wireless keys at the front (windows may discover Bluetooth and wireless before the launch tool has installed the right drivers thus leaving you with the Bluetooth problems discussed elsewhere in these forums. After this your C:\acernb\ should be deleted.
In my case it applied the following patches:
a.Chipset drivers
b.Adjusting fontsize for the panel
c.Epowermanagement
d.Acer Launch manager (not the same as the Launch tool)
e.PowerDVD
f.GridVista
g.360degrees (that is copying the installation files to the 360degrees directory)
h.Enable Bluetooth (only internally to avoid windows detecting it first)
i.Install Widcomm Bluetooth drivers
j.Disable Bluetooth
k.Installing erecovery
l.Uninstall emanager
m.And after a reboot: install emanager
n.Set panel (that is adjusting screen resolution)
o.Cleanup (deleting all the unnecessary stuff from this process
Ending with the eMessage that I should consider installing Norton AV

Bluetooth sidenote:
The interesting part of the Bluetooth installation is that it does a bit more than just installing the Widcomm drivers (it does use the files that can be found in PATCH\BTlogo\ on your System CD first). This may explain why many had so much problems with Bluetooth (see elsewhere on the forums). After this Bluetooth worked flawless (even with my Jabra BT 250v headset), though I still have two BT icons in the control panel.
An upgrade of the drivers to version 5.nnnn.1400 went flawless.

LaunchManager Sidenote:
Upgraded to version 1.05.0e (thanks DarthAcer, version 1.06.0e is available on the acer.com.tw site) to get the options for setting and keeping the boot up state of Wireless and Bluetooth)

ePowermanagement Sidenote
Not really happy with this one, even after changing the settings of the scenarios in the registry. Does anyone know a more flexible solution? E.g. I want my system to adapt itself accrding to requirements from top performance to low performance settings (essentially top-heat producing and low-heat producing)

CD-Drive sitenote
The system uses two NTI drivers. I removed the NTI and PowerDVD software that came with it and installed Nero, which put in two more drivers and works flawless.
Removing the NTI drivers (uninstalling the CD-drive in devicemanager) left me with a buggy Nero installation, so I guess that leaving them in and just putting Nero on top is advisable.


The recovery scenarios
1.using backup DVD (wh recovery partition available)
2.using system CDs (wh recovery partition available)
3.using a ghosted image of the recovery partition
4.putting back a ghosted image of my system before I messed up (first alongside one of the above, then on it’s own
5.recovering the recovery partition itself

First scenario: use the backup of the factory image on DVD.
1 partition

Results: flawless, but...
Remember to leave in the DVD for step 2 after step 1
It doesn’t install erecovery (because of the missing hidden partition

Warnings:
Pull out any USB hard drives before you start, because the recovery process may mess up
(In my case it patched the unpacked images of the recovery cds on the USB drive instead of going for the C-drive)


Second scenario: using system CD
1 partition

Results: flawless, but...
Be aware that the system reboots after unpacking the two recovery CDs, at which moment you'll have to have the system CD in the CD-drive again. After this the system loads the patches and operates flawless. Everything is installed properly except erecovery (because of the missing recovery partition)
Most probably you get an error message after loading recovery cd 2. Just put in the system cd and do a Ctrl-Alt-Del.


Third scenario: putting back the recovery partition
Don't try this at home!
Putting back a ghost image of the recovery partition. Probably it works straight away if you took the image from the original partition and restore it with original MBR
In my case I had an image of a recovery partition which I had copied to another drive. After ghosting it and putting it back it didn't work.
I had to change the partition type to active and visible (partition type 06 instead of 12) to boot into it, and interrupt the boot up process by pressing Ctrl-C a few times.
Once in the partition I had to run "acer\tools\mbrwrdos install acer\tools\rtmbr.bin", thus resetting the MBR.
(note there is also an rtmbrnb.bin, but this didn't load)
After this Alt-F10 works again!!!
And you can go on to restore the factory install.

Results flawless.

Warning: back up your first track and original MBR first!!! And store it on some other media than your machine's hard drive, so it's accessible for recovery tools.


Fourth scenario: Putting back the ghost snapshot of my system
flawless, but remember to put back the MBR of your snapshot otherwise you are left with the Acer one which may try to hide your drive if it's now the first partition.
You can leave the recovery partition from the previous scenario if you like, but you have to re-apply the Acer MBR for it to work, after which Alt-F10 at boot-up should work again (even without erecovery installed).
And don’t try to hide another windows installation because your re-installed image will may take some settings from it.
Note: It may work if you change the partition type to something that Windows doesn’t look for (e.g. unallocated space or diagnostic type, but I haven’t tried this myself yet)

Note: I used the full Norton ghost. The ghost (ghost.exe and gdisk.exe) on the recovery CDs seem not capable of doing anything else than working in a DOS environment and putting back FAT32.

Be aware of drive letter issues: If your Windows snapshot came from drive C you have to keep or change the letter to drive C before you try to reboot in Windows.
There are still some registry entries which refer to files using a full path inclusive drive letter. I haven’t found a tool yet, to sort this out automatically.
Be aware of linkages (e.g. I changed my temp, pagefile and mydocuments locations to another drive, because I want a compact software drive, a drive for rubbish and a data drive, but I didn’t succedd completely yet because MSOffice put it’s cache on my data drive. I should have hidden it first!)

Personally I am not really interested in recreating systems starting from the factory installs since it takes a couple of days to get the machine in proper working condition with all updates, applications and settings. It would only become relevant when I decide to flog my lappy.


Final Advice:
Acer's erecovery solution is pretty useless for an NTFS environment (which I need for the security and protection options). XP versions of backup solutions capable of taking and putting back so-called “bare-metal” snapshots give better results and less hassle (and work with NTFS). I used Ghost10 but I am aware that other solutions, e.g. Acronis, may be even better because they come without the usual Symantec overhead (in terms of running processes).
Use these tools to take a full snapshots of your system when everything is working fine (e.g. after the 1st install) and at least incremental snapshots before any intended major change (Windows own system recovery also works well if you use it before and after major changes, but it cannot cope with to much complexity, e.g. going back to factory installation.)



Scenario Optional: recreating the recovery partition from the system CDs or your own recovery DVD
Well, there are a few differences between the three recovery scenarios, both in the directory structures as well as in the tools available.
Generally:
1. there are differences between the three programs that drive the recovery
SystemCD: recovery.exe
BackupDVD: cd2d.exe
Recovery partition: d2d.exe
(and recovery from LAN not treated her)
I am not sure if they run in one of the other environments; some of the tools they rely on seem to have hard coded paths in them.
But you may be capable of bypassing this by building your own batch file.
2. There are differences in the patch process (just trace patch.bat in the patch directory)
With a lot of time and patience (and more important a good snapshot of your system to put back after you messed up) you may succeed.
3. The System CD does not have the Acer MBR included, so unless you still have the right MBR and know how to extract it and put it back, you cannot use the system CD to rebuild the recovery partition.
4. Only the recovery partition and your backup DVD support the auto-activation without further hassle (you’ll have to look elsewhere on the forums to learn how to achieve the same with the System CD or an other legal OEM copy of Windows. So if you would want to flog your notebook in a near original state you better keep it save somewhere, but not necessarily on your notebook’s HD.
Note: I am not sure if the System CD solves might solve auto-activation in another way, since there are differences between the ghost images on the System CD and the one in the recovery partition and your backup DVD. Maybe that’s where the key at the bottom of your notebook comes in. (I didn’t check on the activation status)
4. The Ghost image of the pre-installed Windows XP is password protected (for obvious reasons). But given the fact that it doesn’t ask for a password it should be somewhere in the above exe-programs.
5. Finally, and most important, at least for me, you are still left with FAT32

So an “as was” recovery isn’t possible with the tools we have, but we can do the same with a few batch files, leaving out the good looking user interface. Essentially we only need extraction of the images (step1) and patching (step2) which is driven by patch.bat.

Given the fact that your DVD or Acer's recovery CDs can do the same recovery job, you should ask yourself why you should want a restore to settings at time of delivery. There is no universal solution: The so-called NAPP CDs are also series or model dependent (the one that still can be found at the acer.com.tw site is specific for the C110), and essentially they only restore the disk structure after which you’ll have to load in the System CD and Recovery CDs (in the NAPP process)
So if you really want to restore your notebook in its original state you will have to revert to Acer's support centers (and pay, because it isn’t a standard warranty job).

Other uses of the recovery partition (including the Alt-F10 feature)?
The only advantage, that I see, for the Alt-F10 feature and the Acer MBR is that it gives you a simple boot manager without taking up one of the four possible slots for primary partitions in the MBR (since it is a modification of standard MBR some virus scanners should run AWOL on it)
At the moment I use it to store a copy of a recent snapshot of my system, together with the ghost executables capable of setting it back to my NTFS partition (note that these are different from the ones coming with your system)
But eventually I intend to burn my own little recovery environment to a DVD (search for BartPE or LiveCD to learn how to do this), which makes it machine and disk independent. My Ghost already came with this type of a solution, but desiged for the lowest common denominator it uses only part of the system resources available (assuming only 256Mb), which means that it takes longer to load the CD environment than it takes to actually restore a disk image.

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to many users, especially BitBasher, DarthAcer, for pointing out the invaluable pitfalls.


Cheers

Drio

Strange ...

I tested tecovering from the CDs without the recovery partition still there, so that's a difference.

If you have a partion editor (e.g. ptedit) you could look what the status is of the partitions on your drive. It looks like your newly installed windows partition is not active.
Set it active (value 80h instead of 00h) in the second column, an visible (just changing 1Ch to 0Ch in the first column)

If you actually have a windows cd you could boot from it and go into recovery mode (NOT new install more; it'll show up as an option somewhere on the initial blue screens).
log on to your new windows partition
you'll arrive in c:\windows
CD ..
type HELP to see the commands avialable ...
type BOOTCFG /? to see it's options
rebuild the boot configuration (that's just rebuilding boot.ini); I don't know the command from the top of my head but it'll show up after BOOTCFG /?
since you already messed up the Acer MBR you should also use FIXBOOT to get the MBR right for your configuration.
This should do it wh messing up your installation.
Note that using another windows CD in this way does not change anything in terms of registration status or registration keys, so any bootable windows XP cd should do the trick.

Maybe the system CDs write to boot.ini that windows is in the 1st instead of the second partition (i don't know).
Or the batch file (on second run when copying the patches to acernb) ends with hiding the second partition.
So maybe if you start with 2 additional partitions (next to PQSERVICE) it'll work.

the recovery CDs (at least in my case) don't have the mbrwrdos and mbrwrwin programs.
since your MBR isn't an acer one any more you could hide and inactivate your new partition and unhide the recovery partition change it to a FAT32 type and set it active.
break into the autoexec before it gets to restore!!!!!
and then type acer\tools\mbrwrdos /? to see the options
first save your current MBR and 1st track to a floppy (or elsewhere away from your HD (but also on your recovery partition itself.
Then apply acer\tools\mbrwrdos install acer\tools\rtmbr.bin
Now the recovery partition should work again.

Rename autoexec.bat to semething.bat so you don't have to break in next time. You just have to start something.bat if you are in it and want to run the recovery process.

Hope this did add to the confusion in a productive way.


Cheers

Drio

PS
I have figured out out to build a full Windows install CD (bootable) from nothing else than the files available in your installation, thus allowing both recoveries, like the one above, as well as fresh installs. But that's for another post. Wouldn't help you anyway, since you have to get in first.

Good to know that I'am not the only one who had to learn the hard way.

I just remembered that the scenario from the recovery CDs breaks just before it ends. If I remember well it also tests for the Acer MBR, and since it is missing it breaks before setting the new partition to active.
Or otherwise it simply assumes that the partition where it sets back Windows is by definition a certain number, thus leaving you with a wrong boot.ini, as noted.
With the BOOTCFG you can correct the boot.ini, but first you have to get in windows. If you let windows search for installations it finds the ones in normal hidden partitions but not the ones hidden in non-standard ways (changed to type 12h).

Cheers