I recently had an experience working on my brother's Acer Extensa 4220 notebook. He had put a password on the drive and had forgotten it. This post explains how I was able to get the computer up and running again and replaced the internal drive to a larger drive. Note: DISCLAIMER-I have no formal training in computer science. I am just a guy who maintains his own computers (mostly Macintosh PPC versions and a couple of older PCs). I believed that from what I read that because a password was put on the drive, since the password was forgotten that the user data would be lost-our data was lost in the process. Yes if you truly needed the data, you could contact a recovery company to retrieve it, at some expense. So don't blame me if you lose data. I am telling you that you will lose your data. You proceed at your own risk.-
A user manual is available online: http://support.acer.com/us/en/drivers_download.aspx
Pg 64 of the manual goes through the recovery process [press (alt+f10) when you see the Acer logo].
Bios note: In the bios under the Main tab, make sure the sata mode is set to "IDE MODE" or a windows install disc will not see the drive without drivers. I ended up not needing a install disc, because the install is maintained on the hard drive in a protected area.
So lets do this. READ ALL OF IT BEFORE YOU PROCEED
Remove the hard drive to zero the drive on an other machine: Turn off the notebook, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery pack. With the power appliances removed, unscrew the 5 screws on the bottom cover to gain access to the hard drive. I did not use an anti-static but it is at this point that you should. Slide the drive away from the sata connector and lift it out with the drive carrier.
I used an USB to SATA drive adapter to connect it to another machine. I first tried reformatting on my XP Sp3 PC but the drive never appeared in "My Computer". I don't own any PC drive management software so I don't know if that would have done a reformat or not. So I did what I usually do at this point. I connected the drive to my Mac (10.4.11). The drive came up needing to be initialized. In Disk Utility under options "Set Zero All Data" with HFS+. It started at 2hrs and stayed there for a while. The progress bar got down to a half an hour and stayed there for a good 1.5 hrs without moving so I figured it wasn't going any farther, unplugged the drives power connector.
Connect the drive back in the Acer notebook and see what happens: I wasn't sure were I was with the status of the drive since it didn't finish the reformat. It was late when I unplugged it. The next morning I plugged the drive back in the Mac and I appeared on the desktop. The drive had two folders on it. One titled Acerdata. I then ejected the drive and proceeded to hook the drive back up to the Acer notebook. Replaced the drive cover, reinstalled the battery and power adapter and turned it on. Almost immediately it ask for a password. I thought I was back to where I started. I typed what had been our best guess of the password and it went through. Fearing that I would going back through all of this I restarted (control+Alt+delete), logged in the the bios and reset the password to none. Type the password I just entered and pressed enter, and then enter twice for the new password to leave it blank. Save changes and exit the bios.
Begin Default recovery: At the Acer logo press Alt+f10 together to enter the recovery process. Follow the on screen adventure (restore from factory default image unless you had burnt disc to use). From this point the rest is self explanatory. Check out the manual if you have any questions.
Clone the drive to a new larger drive and boot from that drive:
I don't know that I need to explain this process so I will summarize what I did. If you have burnt install disc from the Acer eRecovery program, install the hard drive in the notebook and proceed to the recovery mode.
I didn't burn the install disc so I installed the new drive by cloning the old drive. Go to the drive manufactures website and download there drive management software to prepare the drive. I used the USB to SATA adapter to connect the drive. Install the software and follow the instructions. Then swap out the drives. It may ask for a password. Either press enter or type something that you can remember. I would suggest going back in to the bios and removing the password to avoid future problems.
I am providing this information because I have needed information that I have found on other peoples blogs or forums. I am just returning the favor. If you found this page looking to find out how to reset the drive password on an Acer notebook, I hope this information will be of service.
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