new laptop

[cliffhucker]

Hi I got this new Acer laptop from New Egg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115256

Aspire 3102 for under $600.

I am bumed it is formatted in Fat32 and the ppartition is not to my liking.

It came with 1 cd and it is Norton AntiVirus.
It has XP home installed and a few other things/programs.

Is this normal to by it loaded with OP sys and no restore disc?

I wanted to reload and reformat/partiton the HDD but not without a disc??

I know I could use partition magic to repartition but can I use it to reformat and not lose my installation?

Like I said, I have no backup for the op system etc so I would not want to do anything risky.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

 

[talldude123]

Most manufacturers like Dell will just give you a CD for the trial software, but not the OS. There was probably a $10 charge for the OS CD.

 

[EricB]

look in your c drive for and I386 folder. copy that to a cd or to another external harddrive (the best option here)

google bart pe. install it. point it to the I386 folder to make a bart pe disc. let me know if that don't work.

I'll upload you one

get a bootable partition magic cd

use this option for having the folder on an external harddrive
boot from the pm disc and delete your partitions and create new ones.
then boot from the bart pe cd with exteranal hdd connected.

open the a43 file management utility browse to the winnt.exe or the winnt32.exe (I forget which, you'll know) of that I386 folder click it. it will start the windows installation process for you

if you don't have an external hdd.

use pm to make the partiton within windows. it will reboot and created it

tell me if you have to go this route as it is more complicated