Laptop/Desktop Image / Lost eRecovery Password:

This is a problem I recently experienced with my laptop, so I thought it would be the best tip to start off with.
Many laptop, and some desktop computers these days don’t come with installation CD’s, rather the install image is on the main hard drive in a hidden partition. In the case of Acer laptops this partition is called ‘PQSERVICE.’

Considering Acer wanted a fair whack of money for a new image on CD-ROM, and I didn’t want to fork out that kind of money for something I already had, albeit couldn’t access due to password issue. I decided to forge on with the recovery of the password file.

I had forgotten the password that I placed on the eRecovery image when I changed it from the default ‘000000.’
As I needed to reformat the computer I couldn’t do anything without this password. Interestingly, I was also unable to install a fresh copy of Windows XP from a CD-ROM, part way into the initial stages of the install it came up with a message of the disk been locked or similar. As such, I needed the password to reformat.

I did a bit of searching on the Internet, and identified the file I needed to locate which contained the password, the file been AIMDRS.DAT.

A lot of sites suggested the use of a boot CD called ‘Ultimate Boot CD’. I tried this with very limited success, the boot CD worked without fault, although I was unable to successfully locate the password file with this method. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, I may have well not been doing something right or needed additional programs.

Having said this, if you fix computers on a regular basis I would strongly recommend getting the Ultimate Boot CD, it has some rather nifty tools on it, and could get you out of a tight corner.
Visit the web-site for more information and to download the image file.

I ended up ended up using a data recovery program, once installed I was able to see all logical drives and hidden partitions. Remembering Windows XP is a NTFS file system and partition its obvious the image file will most likely be a FAT32 file system partition. After running the the program I could see the ‘PQSERVICE (FAT32) 4.92Gb’ partition, I used the intelligent scan option to scan the drive to recover the files on the partition, and located in the root of the partition. Copy this file to your hard drive, then open it with notepad or any text editor.
The file will look like what’s shown below:

FILENAME: AIMDRS.DAT
[MyData]
PD=Your Password
HT=

Once you have successfully recovered the password from the AIMDRS.DAT file, simply reboot your computer, and in the case of an Acer laptop press ALT+F10 during the BIOS bootup to start the eRecovery process.

I am pretty confident most laptops/computers that have a recovery image on the hard disk drive would work in the same manner, although the location of the dat file which contains your password may be different and the name of said file also different. It would be just a matter of searching. Obviously you need to first identify the partition which holds the image, which is pretty easy, as you can easily see the main partition which holds the current OS and file-system, so the other must be the image partition.

Whatever you do, don’t delete or format any partition(s), or you will be in big trouble.
Simply scan/view the target partition and copy any files ending in .DAT to your hard-drive for viewing.

© 2009 -BAMPHOTO