Use Acer D2D OEM recovery partition for alternate means

Ive been thinking of ways to have an "alternate boot mode" thats fairly hidden for a pc, and something came to mind.

When i boot my notebook (acer aspire one) theres an unadvertised ALT-F10 option that triggers the OEM restore process. There is a partition on the HD called PQ service, which contains all of the data needed to do this.

What im wondering, is could i possibly use this ALT-F10 functionality to launch something else, other than the recovery partition. Perhaps a second OS which i load onto that partition, or some recovery software of my own choosing.

Anyone played with this? or have opinions on the matter


Im trying to figure out the process by which it boots. Apparently it looks to a special "acer" branded mbr, which then points to the specially formatted LQSERVICE partition, and launches autoexec.bat (and theres a bunch of busines about hiding and unhiding the partition in here. These are rough guesses, but if it really is that simple, it would seem i could use alt-f10 to launch something of my choosing with a modifed autoexec.bat

 

I believe that if you install windows in a ordinary way to this partition it will become visible, and you will need to use tools like acronis disc director suite to hide it again.

 

Yep, thats correct. I experimented a bunch last night, made sure i still had the acer MBR, that the partition type was 12, everything but couldnt quite get windows booting. I, going to keep trying today, i cut down the stock PQservice partition to what appears to be the bare minimum to still "boot" the D2D recovery. Ill upload an image of that in a moment