Acer's 'method' of having the recovery data is to have the user make a recovery disc BEFORE the acer dies. A travelmate 4230 I'm working on has this lovely feature, which is utterly useless once something causes Windows to puke. Win XP in this case.
So if you do not make the recovery disk ahead of time, and cannot safe boot into Windows, you are hosed and have to buy the recovery disks from acer.
Next time, I'm buying an apple. At least they include the discs with their products.