I have an Acer Aspire 5315. My hard drive fried a while back and I have just bought a new empty hard drive. I've installed it but now I need to set up the hard drive. I need help doing that, I do not have the boot disc, never got one, But I was told I can get it off the website? My friend got something off the website that I was told might be the boot set up, but how do I run it? It was downloaded on to a CD. Please help.

What does it do when you turn on computer and insert disc?

What does it do when you turn on computer and insert disc?

First it was saying "No bootable device -- insert boot and press any key" and when I press and key it repeats it. Then I reset defaults and I got
Broadcom UNDI PXE-2.1 v10.0.9
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.
Followed by the no bootable device.

Been a while, you may need to hiss f8 at start up and have CD be first drive.
Good Luck, others may post additional/better suggestions..

When from factory, usually there will be a hidden partition on the hard drive with the recovery software needed to reinstall.

If that hard drive is no longer around, there is no way to access it and if there were no recovery cd's that came with the unit, you may be out of luck and have to purchase a version of windows to install.

Best bet would be to purchase the cd's from Acer for your exact model as it will have all the necessary drivers needed for the hardware for the laptop - Even if still in warranty, Acer will not send out any disks as over 30 days of original purchase of unit. They will require you to pay for the disks.

Really no other options at this point as the drive died and I take it you are out of warranty if the hard drive failed and are not getting it replaced.

Usually boot disks when downloaded will usually have an .iso extension which is a CD image. This file must be burned directly to the CD using software that supports burning iso images.

It can also be something like .iso.zip which would make it more complicated.

I got Disc's for My dell from Ebay when I couldn't locate my own:
http://computers.shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=acer++5315+cd&_sacat=18793&_odkw=acer+cd&_osacat=18793&bkBtn=&_trksid=p3286.m270.l1313

acer cd items - Get great deals on System Utilities Maintenance, Networking Servers items on eBay.com! (http://computers.shop.ebay.com/Software-/18793/i.html?_nkw=acer+cd&_catref=1&_fln=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282)

First, You have to install an operating system on the drive. How you do that depends on what OS you want to install. Do you have an OS disk? Do you have Recovery disks for the PC?