Formatting new manufactured computer
 

Hey guys, I need some help.

I got my mom a new acer desktop computer and it has Vista loaded. I want to load chinese XP on it but I know the new computers have the recovery image loaded on the HD somewhere vs providing CD's like back in the day. Can I just format the OS partition and load chinese XP? I would like to keep the recovery image should one day I want to put vista back on. I just can't seem to find where the image is.

Thanks guys.

The recovery image is hard to find, and even harder to delete. I believe that it cannot be deleted using Windows. I suspect you need to use Linux. You will notice that some of your HD capacity is missing.

Just go ahead and install XP.

HP computers come with a utility that will allow you to create recovery DVD disks. These can be used to restore the computer back to factory-spec. I suspect Acer may have a similar utility. Look around the Start menu for it.

The recovery partition on my HP shows up as a separate drive under My Computer.

Create the recovery discs before you do anything.

BTW, you can delete the recovery partition from within Windows. You have to disable the background program that most mfgrs install that prevents you from doing it. I'm not sure why you'd want to as it's usually only 10 GB.

If you go to Disk Manager in Windows, you should see a partition on the drive that is allocated but has no drive letter assigned to it... that should be the recovery partition.

^ if it in fact has one. I know HP's do, not sure about Acer though, my grandparents laptop didnt have one

Last time I had a customer with a Acer desktop and Vista loaded. We couldnt load XP becuase there werent any drivers supporting it.... That might be a issue you might run into.

I bet you have a Vista Key already...
can't you install with a pirated Vista cd, then use that key?

The HD does have a seperate 20GB partition with a EISA config which I assume is the recovery partition. There's also the option in the start menu to make recovery disks which I've done already. Thanks guys!

go use windows 7