W510, Riddle me this, I bet you can't do a system restore on a w510-1620 tablet by itself.

[Alchemist]

All,

Ok, long story short, I had an issue with free drive space on my acer w510 1620 and talked to acer support. They told me to do a system recovery back to original and see if it solved the problem. And thus it begins...

First, you can't use the recovery partition on the w510-1620 because it doesn't have one with only 32gb of space, you have to use the provided DVDs.

So, you can try system restore through the general settings, but it says all the recovery media is invalid (system disk, recovery 1, recovery 2, recovery us language).

So, you must need to boot from the System DVD right. Well theres a bit you have to do first... go into bios, add an admin password, turn off secure boot, change boot order to dvd first. plug in your dvd and reboot. Except that doesn't work because the machine boots faster than an external dvd will startup so its not recognized and booted from.

So, you have to turn on the F12 boot option in bios. That way you can hit F12 at start up to give you a boot menu.... wait a few seconds until the drive is ready and pick the dvd to boot from.

But wait, how do you hit F12 during boot when you don't have the keyboard dock and there is no onscreen keyboard at that point.

So, if anyone has successfully done a recovery on one of these without throwing extra hardware at it id love to know how.

[TheGuac]

All,

Ok, long story short, I had an issue with free drive space on my acer w510 1620 and talked to acer support. They told me to do a system recovery back to original and see if it solved the problem. And thus it begins...

First, you can't use the recovery partition on the w510-1620 because it doesn't have one with only 32gb of space, you have to use the provided DVDs.

So, you can try system restore through the general settings, but it says all the recovery media is invalid (system disk, recovery 1, recovery 2, recovery us language).

So, you must need to boot from the System DVD right. Well theres a bit you have to do first... go into bios, add an admin password, turn off secure boot, change boot order to dvd first. plug in your dvd and reboot. Except that doesn't work because the machine boots faster than an external dvd will startup so its not recognized and booted from.

So, you have to turn on the F12 boot option in bios. That way you can hit F12 at start up to give you a boot menu.... wait a few seconds until the drive is ready and pick the dvd to boot from.

But wait, how do you hit F12 during boot when you don't have the keyboard dock and there is no onscreen keyboard at that point.

So, if anyone has successfully done a recovery on one of these without throwing extra hardware at it id love to know how.

Can you attach a keyboard via usb or bluetooth before you restart?

[Alchemist]

Can you attach a keyboard via usb or bluetooth before you restart?

I could via USB, but that port is needed for the external dvd. I don't have a bluetooth keyboard handy.

[Alchemist]

I just got done with chatting with acer support. Stumped them, got a case number and elevated to a level 2 tech, tomorrow since they are gone for the day.

[meengla]

I just got done with chatting with acer support. Stumped them, got a case number and elevated to a level 2 tech, tomorrow since they are gone for the day.

I have a thread here about backup and recovery.... I am looking into plain old Windows 7 like System Image creation on an external usb drive but no progress so far.

[e-schreiber]

I could via USB, but that port is needed for the external dvd. I don't have a bluetooth keyboard handy.

This paper-thin and feather-light trend breaks my geek heart. I wish OEMs didn't make devices that are so thin that it's impossible to fit 2 full-size USB ports in them. 1 USB port should be the minimum....and 2 USB ports seem to be ideal.

[Alchemist]

This paper-thin and feather-light trend breaks my geek heart. I wish OEMs didn't make devices that are so thin that it's impossible to fit 2 full-size USB ports in them. 1 USB port should be the minimum....and 2 USB ports seem to be ideal.

If I had the dock I would have 2 ports, but no dock, yet. Of course If i had the dock i wouldn't need 2 ports. lol.

[Breed]

Can you not just use a USB hub? You can buy them really cheap - it should solve your issues?

[sketchy9]

All,

Ok, long story short, I had an issue with free drive space on my acer w510 1620 and talked to acer support. They told me to do a system recovery back to original and see if it solved the problem. And thus it begins...

First, you can't use the recovery partition on the w510-1620 because it doesn't have one with only 32gb of space, you have to use the provided DVDs.

So, you can try system restore through the general settings, but it says all the recovery media is invalid (system disk, recovery 1, recovery 2, recovery us language).

So, you must need to boot from the System DVD right. Well theres a bit you have to do first... go into bios, add an admin password, turn off secure boot, change boot order to dvd first. plug in your dvd and reboot. Except that doesn't work because the machine boots faster than an external dvd will startup so its not recognized and booted from.

So, you have to turn on the F12 boot option in bios. That way you can hit F12 at start up to give you a boot menu.... wait a few seconds until the drive is ready and pick the dvd to boot from.

But wait, how do you hit F12 during boot when you don't have the keyboard dock and there is no onscreen keyboard at that point.

So, if anyone has successfully done a recovery on one of these without throwing extra hardware at it id love to know how.

Actually, I had to do a system restore a while back and I can tell you that even WITH the keyboard dock it didn't work. Somehow the BIOS didn't recognize it and wouldn't accept the key presses. Luckily I have a keyboard from my desktop so I was able to get it done. It's definitely a problem.

-R

[Alchemist]

Can you not just use a USB hub? You can buy them really cheap - it should solve your issues?

It just might, since you could leave the DVD on the hub powered up. Hate to buy more hardware to fix a problem though, I don't have a powered hub handy.