[chrisstreet]

I have an advent laptop that needs an operating system recovery.
It is an Advent 7109B with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition.

How do I make use of the hidden recovery partition as the laptop was not supplied with any recovery disks?
A previous laptop I recovered was activated by pressing Ctrl + F10 on startup. This hasn't worked for this laptop. I have checked the hidden partition and it is still present on the hard disk.

Thanks,

Chris

[smax013]

Have you tried to see if it offers any key combinations to use during boot up?

[chrisstreet]

Hi, thanks for you reply.

I have looked and there are no notifications apart from F2 for Setup and F12 for multiple boot.

After searching around yesterday afternoon I found this useful webpage detailing the methods of recovery of a similar advent laptop.

www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/pc/MC3040.htm

I have tried the methods described but there must be a hardware problem as the computer stops booting on a black screen just after POST when it attempts to read the HDD. I have used Windows XP Pro installation CDROM to format and install using a brand new HDD to test it and it does that same thing after "copying files" it does it's usual restart to boot on the HDD and stalls at a black screen. So it's not the HDD it must be the HDD controller, which curiously shows as the primary IDE device in BIOS setup despite it being a SATA drive.

I will see if I can find a BIOS update.

Thanks,

Chris Street

[smax013]

chrisstreet said:

So it's not the HDD it must be the HDD controller, which curiously shows as the primary IDE device in BIOS setup despite it being a SATA drive.

SATA drives will generally show up in this was as many computers (especially XP computers) will be setup to operating in "IDE emulation" mode. Vista computers might have SATA setup in AHCI or RAID mode. XP did not have ACHI or RAID mode drivers by default, so they have to be installed as a separate drivers during installation/setup, thus it is usually not setup. Vista does have ACHI or RAID mode drivers for SATA, so that mode is usually enabled on computer (which can sometimes throw people for a loop who try to downgrade to XP and do not know install the drivers during XP installation or do not know to switch to IDE emulation mode, if they can as not all manufactured computers will allow you to do so).

[chrisstreet]

All questions about this laptop are answered!

This URL...
www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/laptop/7109b.htm
If for the Advent 7109B laptop. It states that the laptop is a re badged "Uniwill L51II9" laptop (from ECS EliteGroup).

This URL...
[http://www.uniwill.com/UserDownload/l51ii/l51ii.php]
Is the downloads page for that laptop.
I successfully downloaded the latest BIOS (1.10) and installed it without fail. The computer now boots every time, no more stalling on a black screen.

Hope this helps someone with the same problem!

Chris Street

[smax013]

Glad you got it solved.