"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
A friend that got it back to a place to do a complete reinstall? Some friend...Should be at a place to do a reinstall at any point as long as it powers on.I would have used the Win 7 install disk to attempt a start up repair. If that didn't work there are other tools on the disk that you can try to resolve the issue.Also, I recommend staying away from 10 for a little longer.
These usually come with their own recovery disk (often also contains the OS rather than an actual Microsoft disk)That notwithstanding, Acer includes all of this living on the machine.Check this outhttp://acer--uk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3068/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xNDQ4MzgyMTczL3NpZC94WW9VZmpDbQ%3D%3DEven if this doesn't help, they seem to have a lot of other info on their site
<snip> The most stable Windows system I own is an old Dell tower running Vista (believe-it-or-not) which I turned off all updates after the initial service pack install. Oh, that and a very old Dell tower running XP. Can't kill that thing.