Hi guys, well today was one of those days when you realise that 80% or more of your hard-drive space is being taken up by random junk, well i thought that something should be done to rectify this problem and so i went searching for my 3 disk Windows Xp recovery set. After i found what i was looking for i went through the tedious task of backing-up all my important files onto a few dvd's then proceeded to boot windows from the recovery disk number 1 to start the clean install. Basically wanting to open up some space and revert it back to its original state at the time of purchase. However what i was not expecting was the errors that followed, i said "yes" to all the warning messages and when the actual symantec ghost recovery program was actually going to start wiping my hard-drive i was prompted with an error window, the following is what was said "Single user version cannot do multiple loads", now i was confounded as to what this meant...was it refferring to some sort of qouta i had reached that only allowed a certain amount of uses? or was it just my bad luck that something wrong always goes wrong? Well it did have a continue option and so i selected that with hopes that it may still continue the cleansing process. yet i was saddened when to my astonishment i was facing yet another error message, this time saying "Error 11000, Invalid Dump File". Then it said contact manufacturer if problems blah blah, now i was getting quite frustrated at this point and so i pressed enter for continue and the program said my disk had been completely erased and that i should press any key to restart windows and continue, This however was not true as the process to wipe my hard-drive did not occur in the first place. What im really wondering is what has happened and how can i fix it? (if possible), i have used this recovery disk 2 other times to re-install windows Xp on my Acer Aspire T300 the computer i am trying to cleanse. Any help would be much appreciated and sorry for the long winded story!

From searching Acer I see only the mention of a single Recovery Disk to restore Factory Settings.

Just to clarify: are you using the original Acer CD?

yes, i am 100% certain this is the original disk, its covered in Acer logos and the green, with the "For Distribution only with an Acer PC" on it and also Acer Aspire T300 Recovery CD for Windows XP Home 3 CD Set. Rarely used it only twice before and it worked fine.

Mind you its an AU/NZ version, due to the location i bought it in (Australia).

Just my bit: I think it is the disk.

Yeah i was thinking that too, but why would it just suddenly not work, its been kept in a safe place and has absolutley minimal scratching and it has worked before, this is just totally confusing me!

Setup errors (assuming a good CD) are almost always hardware problems.

If you are doing a Clean (format) install there should be nothing to error on the software side.

I am looking at Acer for ideas: http://global.acer.com/support/index.htm

Have you run a diagnostic on your hard drive? Do you know the manufacturer of your hard drive?

This is from Acer:



Error Message: Single User Version Cannot do Multiple Loads


When performing a Recovery using the CDs included with the system, it is recommended that when prompted for the next CD(s) during the Recovery process to wait approximately 10 seconds after inserting the CD, but before clicking OK.

Error 11000, Invalid Dump File is a Ghost error.

Can you try the process again and write out all the verbatim error messages?

Ok well now u wouldn't beleive it but its coming up with a different error message this is just after i have said yes to all the warnings about backing up and im on the screen with Symantec Ghost version 7.0.0.260, its now saying that "Cannot Open X:\RCDIMAGE.IMG" i never knew there was an X:\ drive? and when i put the cd in windows eplorer i can see that file sitting in the disk. Strange...then it proceeds to tell me that the hard-drive has been successfully wiped clean. They are the only errors that are coming up. If i wanted to runa diagnostic on my HDD how do i go about performing one? thanks for your replies