Yes if you have a friend who's got a generic Vista OEM disc, you can borrow that and reinstall using the key on the bottom of your PC. One thing I've been finding, mind you this is reinstalling with a plain OEM disc, using keys attached directly to machines. Whenever you do the reinstall, DO NOT enter your product key, just simply select the version of Vista your machine says you are licensed for, also do NOT turn on automatic updates. On about 3 different Vista boxes I've worked on, I've had issues. What basically happened to me was I got the system put together, everything built, drivers and antivirus installed, everything was golden. Then I got a message from Windows basically saying that some protected files had been modified, so as soon as I would log into my account, the system would lock me out.
Note that when this happened, I had not even put a product key in, all I'd done was allowed it to do some updates, installed drivers and antivirus. I've seen this happen on about 3 different vista boxes. The fix was that you had to completely reformat, not put in a product key, and make sure the pc would not do auto updates. Note, the message about protected system files I mention above, I had happen to me once, and Windows was actually activated!!! There seems to be a set of about 3 updates that make these errors happen, what I've done to work around is to download Vista Service Pack 2 as a Standalone, have the auto updates turned off, load drivers, maybe antivirus, load vista service pack 2, and activate, then turn on auto updates and run them until there are no more left.
The reason I say don't put the product key in until after is many times I get messages if enter the Vista key during setup, is that after things are installed, the pc tells me my product key is invalid, so I have to tell it to enter a new key, put my same key in, and it works fine.
Also, do note, many times you can buy recovery discs from the manufacturer, ie acer.
http
/us-store.acer.com/rcd/
Although, I also have an acer laptop, I've got the 5520 model myself. Whenever I entered my Serial number their site tells me that recovery media is not available for that model. That said, as was mentioned before, you can still use a Vista(or whatever version of Windows your machine is licensed for), and the Windows COA on the bottom to manually reload the OS. Keep in mind though you will need to find drivers for the pc though. Acer from my experience, is hard to get all the drivers from. I've had to google to get to the right part of their site. At least for my 5520 you can go and find some drivers by going to acer.com and then their support page, but not all of them.
I know I recently went through this process, as I got this 5520 given to me with a busted lcd screen. But I shoehorned an lcd from an old dell laptop into in that works perfectly. Can't even tell they don't go together. Since I do a lot of pc repair, I already had Vista/7 etc discs, but finding drivers the 1st time was interesting(put a new hard drive in).
Do you have the 5935g? If so, this should be the drivers page you need.
http/support.acer.com/product/default.aspx?modelId=1124
Facebook
Twitter