windows 10 recovery failure

[johnjohn]

Hello everyone,

i am hoping that someone can help me with a recovery problem. i have no idea how to be quick about the problem but i will give it a go (it is complicated).

i have an Acer Aspire VX 15 with a recovery drive. I also have a 6 year old son that has done something to the system and it will not boot into windows.
my son is too knowledgeable and i believe that he may have downloaded a danish windows 11 iso file and tried to install it. I see Danish text when the pc boots (something like forbereder).

i removed the ssd drive and viewed it via an icybox on my other pc and the c drive is intact with all files as well as the recovery partition. whenever i use the f10 keys to launch the recovery process, i get a message that this pc cannot be repaired. I do not understand why.

i used rufus to burn a copy of windows 10 21h iso and i set the system to boot the usb. i tried to run a recovery process from this usb system and it does not see the recovery factory reset files. I have no factory reset options available.

is there something i can do to run the recovery partition files? i cannot understand why they will not run but they are on the drive. what is being loaded at boot process? how can i undo whatever my son has done to this system?

Thank you for reading.

John

[johnjohn]

Hello again,

i have tried bootrec /fixboot and /fixmbr methods but it didn’t work. I followed instructions to unhide the efi partition then fixboot and it worked but the system still does not boot and the factory reset option is still not visible.

do i need to clear hidden on the recovery partition?

now my wife found out how to retrieve the original product key but the wmic get originalproductkey command comes back negative. I bought two of these systems so i tried it on my working system and i got my key to appear. Now i wonder if the efi key has been lost. How can i reinstall the system using the data on the recovery partition? i do not see how the recovery partition is bootbable. I just a few cmd files such as “BasicReset_AfterImageApply”, “FactoryReset_AfterDiskFormat”, “FactoryReset_AfterImageApply” and “RestoreOEMCustomize”. Any ideas how to reinstall from this partition?

Thanks.
John

[Pyro]

Have you tried downloading the Windows Media Creation Tool to a USB (8gb or larger) and using the recovery environment?

If that doesn’t work, is a fresh-install an option for you? (This will remove all personal data)

Prebuilt systems tend to have the key either taped somewhere, or baked into the hardware, if that doesn’t come up you should be able to call Microsoft and get them to activate your copy for you.

[Bruce]

@johnjohn - any updates?

[PeterOz]

whenever i use the f10 keys to launch the recovery process,

Are you using F10 or Alt + F10

RestoreOEMCustomize

Should let you retain data
https://www.ubackup.com/okr/acer-boot-recovery-1234.html#:~:text=Power%20on%20the%20computer%20an d,start%20of%20Acer%20boot%20recovery.

If you are using this and get cannot be recoved error then the recovery partition is damaged
You will have to do a clean install

[Rustys]

Closed abandoned thread.