How long does a CMOS battery need to be out before it resets PW?

[ketchup79]

Originally Posted by slightlyhuman

about to give this a try but can someone chime in what happens if it needs drivers and i didn't install any? i went and looked up the laptop on acer's site and it has a page for the particular model but not one driver for any OS on there

Go to this page and select the OS on the right:

http://support.acer.com/product/defa...px?modelId=815

[slightlyhuman]

Originally Posted by ketchup79

Go to this page and select the OS on the right:

http://support.acer.com/product/defa...px?modelId=815

:beer;

[ketchup79]

Originally Posted by slightlyhuman

:beer;

Mmm, yeah. I'll be in the fridge if you need me, lol.

[slightlyhuman]

Originally Posted by mfenn

The laptop doesn't fall back to booting from CD when there is no OS installed?

Imagoon has a good idea about installing on another machine and then running sysprep before inserting it into the laptop. WDS makes it easy, but you can do the same thing manually for a one-off.

The general steps are:
[*]Open a command prompt and type sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown
[/LIST]

I need some clarification please. After I booted into windows pressing f3 alt Ctrl and shift I see box that days "system preparation tool 3.14". I left it alone and opened cmd. Do I need to run as admin or something? I typed in "sysprep" by itself and got nothing then typed "sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown" and hit enter. Nothing... What am I doing wrong?

[mfenn]

Not sure why you pressed Alt, you just need Ctrl + Shift + F3.

Anyway, that dialog that pops up is the GUI for sysprep, you can't launch another from the command line while it is open. You can either close the GUI sysprep and run from the command line, OR just enter your choices in the GUI. Choose Enter ... OOBE, check generalize, choose Shutdown, and hit OK.

Regarding your driver question sent via PM. That is pretty much a trial and error process. The only driver you NEED is the one for the disk controller so that you can boot Windows in the first place. Everything else can be downloaded or copied onto a USB stick once the HDD has been moved. I would try it without installing any other drivers first, it will probably just work.

[slightlyhuman]

Originally Posted by mfenn

Not sure why you pressed Alt, you just need Ctrl + Shift + F3.

Anyway, that dialog that pops up is the GUI for sysprep, you can't launch another from the command line while it is open. You can either close the GUI sysprep and run from the command line, OR just enter your choices in the GUI. Choose Enter ... OOBE, check generalize, choose Shutdown, and hit OK.

Regarding your driver question sent via PM. That is pretty much a trial and error process. The only driver you NEED is the one for the disk controller so that you can boot Windows in the first place. Everything else can be downloaded or copied onto a USB stick once the HDD has been moved. I would try it without installing any other drivers first, it will probably just work.

sorry, typo on my end.

[slightlyhuman]

Alright just did the sysprep list and threw the HD back into the Acer. After showing bios screen it just sits on a black/blank screen. Never saw the splash screen.

Any idea? Perhaps disks driver problem?

[slightlyhuman]

success! second time worked like a charm. just got to the set up windows screen

:beer; for every one of you guys, learned a valuable lesson!

[mfenn]

Cool, glad it worked out for you!