Using a recovery disk with a different language

[Daniol71]

I have an Acer V3-772G that originally came with Windows 8 64-bit in French. I made a recovery USB as soon as I got the laptop 3 years ago and I'm now planning to sell it to CEX UK. What I didn't know was that the Recovery Environment/WindowsRE was broken (I don't know how since the computer was new).

What this means is that, while I can restore the laptop with the USB, I cannot initiate the restore from the Recovery Partition because it's "unlinked" somehow. See this thread

https://www.eightforums.com/general-support/53334-could-not-find-recovery-environment.html

I've spent days in command line trying to manually rebuild the Recovery Environment and finally given up. CEX UK won't accept the laptop if it doesn't have a working recovery partition or official installation media.

Therefore, I'm planning to get Acer installation media, however this only seems to be available in English from US websites. The french Acer website doesn't have any recovery disks. Since the model is the same but the language is different, will those recovery disks still work?

 

[KYHI]

open command prompt (admin)

Diskpart
select disk 0
list partition
exit
reagentc /info

post pic of cmd window

 

[Daniol71]

 

[Daniol71]

I can fix the error to allow Acer Recovery Management to create a recovery drive, so creating a USB recovery is not a problem. However, resetting the laptop by using the recovery partition always fails.

 

[KYHI]

Diskpart
select disk 0
list partition
exit
reagentc /info
(PS: you Forgot something)

So what you are saying is that neither recovery method works...
Thus the recovery is not properly registered.. Or the recovery image is missing...

since I have the disk information - open cmd prompt(admn)

reagentc /info

 

[Daniol71]

I posted a reply yesterday but it doesn't seem to have loaded will get back to you tomorrow once I have access to the computer again. Thank you for the help so far.

 

[KYHI]

Site had a failed upgrade and had to be rolled back...

The PC does not care about the language....

from cmd prompt (admin) try

Reagentc /setreimage /path \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition1\Recovery\WindowsRE\ /Target C:\Windows
reagentc /enable

 

[Daniol71]

I recognise the commands, but I will give it another try once I get back. The problem is, when I try to order the recovery disk from the Acer US website, my serial number doesn't work, presumably because it's detected as a "non-US serial number".

 

[KYHI]

You could just clean install the English version..
then create a recovery image partition at the end of the disk,
copy the install.wim or install.esd from the setup media into a RecoveryImage Folder on that partition,
Register that as the recovery image....

Basically the Recovery would become the same as a fresh install...

 

[Daniol71]

The first command gives me a "specified path was not found". Am I trying to specify the path to WindowsRE?

Your suggestion would be a fresh install of windows 8? I'm trying to keep the Acer factory settings and apps, so it's not a perfect solution, but I might do that as a last resort.

 

[KYHI]

Am I trying to specify the path to WindowsRE

YES > the WinRE.wim actually

use diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 1
assign letter=T
exit

that will assign a temp drive letter to the RE partition

then you may need to change the attributes > to see inside

Attrib -s -h -a -r T:\Recovery

Attrib -s -h -a -r T:\Recovery\WindowsRE\

you should find the winRE.wim in the WindowsRE folder

then

Reagentc /Setreimage /Path T:\Recovery\WindowsRE /Target C:\Windows