My son’s Acer Aspire Laptop was having trouble. With a corrupt hard drive and his final exams just a few weeks away, I started the process of restoring from his Acer Aspire System Restore DVDs that we had built when he had gotten his laptop for Christmas 2007.
Restore Failed – Reason 0xa000000e. Not a good sign at 10:00 pm at night. My first thought was maybe it was the hard drive that had failed instead of just being corrupt. I had to try again and this time the system restore proceeded just a little further. The Acer Aspire system restore got to the screen where I selected the language, proceeded to the message where it indicated that the system restore would erase all the data on Drive C: and then Restore Failed – Reason 0x000000e.
With the lack of a floppy disk drive in this Acer Aspire Laptop, I felt a little like a fish out of water. I’m old school and 99.9 percent of my utilities still exist on 3.5″ floppies or exist on my Linux systems. Not a problem however, there’s a great utility CD that you can download and create perhaps one of the best Boot CDs around – the Ultimate Boot CD.
For those who are not familiar with the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), this is CD that is jammed packed with some of the best computer utilities around. It has programs that will allow you to change Windows XP passwords if you forget them, programs to erase hard drives, and diagnostic programs to test hardware. Best of all, the Ultimate Boot CD is free and it runs in a Linux based kernel!
I downloaded the latest version of the Ultimate Boot CD (version 4.1.1 at the time of this article), burned the ISO version I downloaded onto a CD and booted the laptop. My first thought was to wipe the hard drive using one of the hard disk drive utilities, but this failed and the error indicated the hard disk drive had failed. Not a good sign at 10:15 pm at night!
In goes the UBCD, and this time, I decided to try some FileSystem Utilities. In here, I loaded some Partition Utilities and a free version of FDISK, a program that would allow me to delete any partitions that existed on the hard drive. I discovered 2 partitions – one was the Windows Vista NTFS partitition and the other was a “Non-DOS” partition” used by the Acer Aspire system restore process to reload the laptop.
Contrary to what the Acer Aspire documentation stated, I knew from previous experience that the system partition was not required. There was enough information on the Acer Aspire System Restore disks to reload the laptop if I could get the restore process started. It would be faster if I could use the system restore partition and to hopefully get to bed a little earlier, I just deleted the Primary Partition C: and restarted the Acer Aspire System Reload processes again.
Restore Failed – Reason 0xa000000e. Not a good sign at 10:30 pm.
Was the hard disk drive actually failed? I didn’t think so. In goes the UBCD, Filesystem Utilities, Partition Utilities, Free FDISK and there went the “Non-DOS” partition with the system restore information. If the hard disk drive had failed, I wasn’t going to have to wait the extra 10 minutes to reload the system anyway. I would get Restore Failed – Reason 0xa000000e – and my night would be finished anyway.
With both partitions deleted, the Acer Aspire System Restore process started and voila – it continued and there was no Restore Failed – Reason 0xa000000e. I let the process finish and Windows Vista installed along with all the drivers and bundled software.
The next morning, I was now curious if the Acer Aspire System Restore process would work with any existing partitions and it ran through successfully the 3 times I tried it. The fourth time however, Restore Failed – Reason 0xa000000e, and it failed again. This led me to believe that there is some problem with this particular version of the Acer Aspire System Restore CDs which occassionally failed when any partitions existed on the hard disk drive. A bit of research on the Internet indicated that this was a common issue with many of the Acer Restore CDs, not just those for the Acer Aspire.
If you own an Acer laptop and are trying to do a system restore, the message Restore Failed – Reason 0xa000000e means you have to delete the existing partitions from the hard disk drive before you start the restore process. This will suck if you have data on any of those partitions, but if you are doing regular backups, you should have no concerns.
Thanks. Happened just ask you describe so I skipped to removing all the partitions and as of this entry, it is loading the Acer Restore from diskd made with another Acer of the exact same model (all purchased at the same time).
I have decided that I hate Acer computer. I had to reformat and reinstall windows. I get that error messages..and it will not let me delete any of the partitions. And of course..without running the restore discs from Acer, a lot of the drivers are missing..I attempted to install my printer and it will not recognize that..and will not recognize my external harddrive. any suggestions?
@Fern,
You will need a utility to delete the partitions. Something like the Ultimate Boot CD as mentioned in the article will allow you to delete the partitions.
I think I love you, this article saved me a LOT of time and effort that would have gone into a complete re-install including a long call to Microsoft to re-activate the license for windows for the machine. I had installed the test version of Windows 7 on this machine, and I needed to revert back to give this laptop to my neice for school, and I hit a brick wall with that error. And I even have a great boot CD now too!
Thank You for this article. Thank Yo for sharing! It helped me greatly! Happy holidays!
I’m having the same problem. Should I delete all partitions and reformat to have only one? I can’t just leave it as unallocated space, correct?
Kristan, I deleted all partitions. The restore CD that was made when we first got the computer system rebuilt everything as if it had come from factory. Ensure that you have the proper restore CDs before deleting all partitions.
I’ve done all the above incuding a low level format etc. No joy. HDD drive tested good on sevral apps but the Acer will not work with the $19.95 (plus shipping) CD.
I have similar problem…cleaned up all partitions…and started restore discs…at about 64%, it aborts with error message! Could the recovery discs be bad? (and it’s a brand new hd!)
Thank You!
I wish I had found this info 2 weeks ago. I have had a friends computer to try restoring from the built-in recovery program and got to the 0xa000000e with nothing further. It locked the computer into a loop. It took me several days to get it out of the loop. THEN I tried recovering again and the file that takes you into the recovery program had been deleted in the process of the above. I ordered the same $19.95 CD above and still wouldn’t work. I was really getting frustrated since this was not my computer. THEN, I ran across this article. I tried deleting the partitions from within Windows and the attempt failed SO, I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD you mentioned and was able to delete all partitions. Then I popped the $19.95 recovery CD in and WOW it worked, restored the computer and all my headaches were gone. THANK YOU SO MUCH BARRY, for posting such a wonderful article.
Thank you so much for this article. I was lost when the error showed up, and by following your advice I was able to solve the problem in no time. Thanks again!
Hey thanks a lot Barry! I was having the same exact prob. and was on my way to Best Buy to pay $300 or more to get this thing repaired but luckily I ran into your post and it helped me out big time. Unlike everybody else I paid $50, maybe because it as a newer version but its a lot better than hundreds.
Once again thanks a lot!
very good article I was having the same problem and couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t have a recovery disk. All I had to go off of was the partition table. I removed every other partition except the one that had the recovery. I kept getting the same error. I then installed a usb drive I removed every partition from that dive and was hoping that i could copy ever thing onto it. I then booted and it started to install and worked perfectly and it didn’t copy nothing to the usb drive, It just worked maybe it was luck.
After the machine booted I didn’t see a file that would make my self a recovery disk. This really blows acer. If the hard drive would fail there would be no way to recover. This wasn’t my machine, so I guess im not worried that much. I just would never purchase an acer.
I found another solution if you don’t have recovery disk. take the hard drive out of your acer machine. Install the hard drive in another machine and use the back up partition to restore it. Don’t boot it up in the other machine. replace the hard drive back into the acer machine and then boot. I’m not sure if the acer bios would need in upgrade or what the real fault acer has. This is what acer told me about the error code. They told me to remove my laptop battery, since it wasn’t a laptop i really think this information was ignorant of acer. I was then told or you can send us money for a recovery disk. Since the computer was out of warranty this is the only options we have for you. I really think it was a glitch that they needed to fix. Disregard my article about the second usb hard drive, that only worked once. I did see the recovery manager to make bootable recovery disk after windows vista loaded and then it would not work. I did not try other dvd’s to see if that was the problem. I kept getting error codes , for such a simple problem acer really made it very difficult . This was not even my machine and I don’t think i will be buying any acer product in the near future.
cannot thank you enough for this.
Simply put, that particular error means (I think) that partition(s) were found that did not match what ACER was expecting .. you either need the ones they expect, or you need absolutely NONE. Nothing in between, as with a buggy W7 install.
I formatted USBstick to accommodate the ISO, BIOS supported USB boot, booted to it, ran utility to simply delete current partitions .. rebooted to Recovery Disk 1 and made it past the error – partitioned properly and I now have my ACER 5610Z back to factory specs with Vista (save me the Vista gripes please – it is better than Microsoft telling me the W7 license I own cannot go on two of my own machines !!! Microsoft is actually the pirate !! )
jb
I have the same problem, but i haven’t got another operating system and don’t know how i can delete the other partitions anyway. I will really happy if anyone help me, please!!!
You need to have any windows CD like vista, 7, or XP and then after when u have entered the windows you will see 3 partitions, and then you need to delete all of them, then you will have only one partition with full size. After that you will use the recovery CD as u did before and u will not have the problem
PS: Acer talk me to boot from a pc-games dvd, because on this cds should be Linux and a Linux boot overwrite the partitions clearly, but not at anyone of my dvds is a boot program-.-
i got a copy of ubcd and i dont know what is the best way of useing it
can anyone give me a step by step on the best way thank you
Ok, I ran into the same problem. I deleted the partitions. Now, I have a blank hard drive, 2 restore disks and a system disk.
If I boot up with the system cd, I get a windows startup sequence but it never gets anywhere.
what do i do from here? Pressing alt=f10 only gets me a blank screen with a blinking cursor…
It’s a known bug with some of the Acer Restore CDs.
To correct this problem, what I had to do was mount the hard drive into another Acer system and run the restore. It’s a very frustrating problem and Acer does nothing to correct or acknowledge that it exists.
I am not able to get anywhere with the recovery cd. Original toshiba hdd crashed and new wd hdd is installed fresh out of box. Checed it with Partition Magic and it is unpartitioned. I get “no partition available” when the recovery cd finishes loading. F10 does not work either. I dont have the luxury of a second Acer to mount new drive in either. Driving me nuts!!!!
Hi,
I OWN AN ACER ASPIRE 6930 G MODEL……….2 DAYS AGO I HAD SOME PROBLEM WITH IT SO I LAUCHED START UP REPAIRS…….AFTER START UP REPAIRS WERE UNSUCCESFULL I STARTED RECOVERY SYSTEM TO BRING IT TO FACTORY DEFAULTS……BUT IN BETWEEN THE PROCESS I GOT AN PROMPT SAYING DATA RECOVERY FAILED ,ERROR 0X00000,PRESS CLT+ALT+DEL TO RESTART THE COMPUTER……NOW WHEN IT RESTARTED ……IT GIVES AN ERROR AS ERROR READING DISK….PRESS CLT+ALT+DEL TO RESTART THE COMPUTER…..AND ALSO ACER E-RECOVERY IS ALSO NOT WORKING AFTER PRESSING ALT+F10…..I WENT TO THE ACER AUTHORISED DEALER AND SUPPORT…THEY SAID MY HARD DISK IS CRASHED AND I HAVE TO REINSTALL MY OS………..BUT WHEN I PUT ANY OS CD IN IT……ND SAY BOOT FROM CD….IT TAKES AGES TO LOAD THE LOADING SCREEN AND THEN NOTHING……I AM UNABLE TO LOAD ANY OS ON IT………….CAN U PLEASE HELP ME OUT…………..I KNOW ABT COMPUTER BT THIS ONE IS NEW FOR ME………I M ALSO SUFFERING FROM THE SAME ERROR……..RESTORE FAILED – REASON 0Xa000000e…….PLEASE HELP ME IF U CAN ………………..AND PLZZ TELLL ME HOW TO MAKE UBCD ON A PEN DRIVE OR ON A CD…..
THNX IN ADVANCE………….
ps: i am using windows vista………….can UBCD WORKS FOR WINDOWS VISTA….IF SO THEN PLZ TELL ME HOW TO MAKE TH CD OR ON THE PEN DRIVE…..
Thanks
You’re welcome.
ps: i am using wndoiws vista………….can UBCD WORKS FOR WINDOWS VISTA….IF SO THEN PLZ TELL ME HOW TO MAKE TH CD OR ON THE PEN DRIVE…..
Thanks,
you saved me and my computer.I used all day with many failed attempts. at the end deleting all partitions helped me.
Hi Shakaib,
I’m so glad that this helped! When I discovered this back when I wrote the article, I was so happy myself!
Barry
Thanks Barry…it works! I just have to delete the partition using Super Fdisk (http://www.ptdd.com/manual2.htm). Then re-install the windows..it goes very smooth without any problem
Thanks bro..
You’re welcome! Glad this helped.