Problem With Acer Aspire 3680

My sister was having problems with her Acer laptop, so I told her about the Alt F10 function that can restore the computer to factory settings, so she asked me if I could go ahead and do that for her. Everything went fine, and after it reset everything, it told me to restart the computer, so I went ahead and did that. After the BIOS screen came up, it went straight to an error screen saying that \Windows\system32\config\system was missing and I don't know why. I've tried other times before on other Acer computers and I have never ran into this problem. This was the first time the reset to factory settings feature was used on this laptop, so I don't know what the problem is. It doesn't go to the Windows Vista screen or anything. I put in a Windows XP disc to see if I could just downgrade it, but the computer wasn't starting the disc up. I changed the boot options in BIOS settings, and that still didn't work. So I tried to put in a Linux disc, and that wasn't loading either. I don't know why CD's aren't working on it now, and I'm getting really frustrated. I tried using KillDisk as well to wipe the whole hard drive, but I'm not having any luck there, either. Anybody have any ideas what is going on? I would really appreciate any help.

Hi and welcome to the WTT forums. Sorry to hear of the problems with your machine…… The Acer Recovery procedure (started by Alt+F10) is a robust and well tested procedure, that will place your machine back into its "Factory Condition" or on some models, to a previous backup……….. if you have made one! However if you have run a disc wiping application like KillDisk that has the ability to wipe everything on the hard drive including partition information, then you have probably destroyed (if you ran it correctly!) the Acer software as well ……along with everything else on the machine, (Data files, music, docs, drivers, user names. passwords etc( in fact everything.) It would be sensible to run the Restore" from Alt+F10 a few more times just to see if it will still work despite you having tried to run KillDisk If not then maybe its going to be a long job……and you will need to consider contacting Acer to buy a set of system discs……. and they will not be cheap unless you can sweettalk them into making you a generous gesture…….. The fact that you cannot boot from CD despite setting the CD as no 1 priority for boot devices in the BIOS could indicate that you have not achieved destruction of everything on your hard drive despite using KillDisk ………..so there is a gleam of hope….but it is a slim one. Lets hope that either your sister or you remembered to make a full backup of important stuff and kept it safe on removable media before you started the current procedures. Regards paws