Got everything up and running.
But in the process there has been sooo many re-boots in a row that it was bound to happen.

Hard drive errors.

And the wonderful french operating sytem does NOT want to run check disk before trying to load. Giving me an abnormal end and reboot.

So next qustion....
Is there any way to run check disk or scan disk from CD ?

I thought about slaving the drive to my other computer but that won't work.
All the hard drive adapters don't match Acer lovely "slide in and out" drive.
(No pins)

And France being the wonderful technilogical hub of the world...
No one sells any kind of adapter for it and I get people scratching their heads
telling me to call Acer. ***who assure me they are available but can't give me the name of a single store***

Oh and I can not boot to the recovery counsel on my computer.
In the french install of the OS..... It does not exist. (clean install only.... which wouldn't be a problem if the system ran check disk but it doesn't)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265 <--- this doesn't work?

What about in safe mode with command prompt?

No clue other than that.

Is your data backed up? If you wouldn't loose anything other than time by reformatting, that's probably your best option.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265 <--- this doesn't work?

What about in safe mode with command prompt?

No clue other than that.

No safe mode available. When I try I get the same problem it reboots.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

Is your data backed up? If you wouldn't loose anything other than time by reformatting, that's probably your best option.

No data on the machine.
But during during re-install it detects the errors...
And does nothing about them. French OS just terminates the install.

I need check disk and I need to be able to run it from a CD.

Update :

Took down the partitions (again)
wiped the drive clean with drive wipe.
Hexed it to believe that the partition was fat32

I speculate this tricked the install CD to believe it was a virgin system and recommence.
Not sure but the syteme installed again. But with twitchy errors.
But I was able to initiate chkdsk and it now rebooted to lock the drive.

See what happens next.
(next time I find away to buy an american version of the operating system)
It

Sounds to me like you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing, or you're playing in that "knows just enough to be really, REALLY dangerous" area.

If it were me, I'd only have one partition. Wipe the drive clean to that, format as NTFS, install.

If Drive Wipe is anything like Partition Magic (and I've never used it before, so I don't know), that may be the source of your problem. A lot of those partitioning/drive formatting and manipulation tools can cause problems if you're not careful.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Sounds to me like you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing, or you're playing in that "knows just enough to be really, REALLY dangerous" area.

If it were me, I'd only have one partition. Wipe the drive clean to that, format as NTFS, install.

If Drive Wipe is anything like Partition Magic (and I've never used it before, so I don't know), that may be the source of your problem. A lot of those partitioning/drive formatting and manipulation tools can cause problems if you're not careful.

Ok you're from Toronto but I won't make you have it against you for that.

As canadien to canadian I have to say this...
The problem I am fighting is the windows GUI is the only thing the same
between the XP you buy in Toronto and what I get here in France.
Everything I learned in Canada does not work on the french versions.
(And the québec version is NOT like the France version.)

My problems have commenced when I decided I do not like Vista and started
to remove it from my new computer.

Vista changes the MBR to something I can not find documentation on.
A partion type 17 is NTFS
A partion type 0B is Fat32

My partition was called 27.

------------------

I heard that when they made Vista, they were going to do that whole WinFS thing. Granted they didn't actually do it, and settled for NTFS, but maybe it's a derivative of some description? Or they just forgot to change the code, god forbid!!! *shock horror*!