V5-431 Operating System Not Found AND F2 BIOS Entry not working

I have an Acer V5-431 (Windows 8).

Suddenly (i.e. it worked one day, but when turned on a few days later it didn’t) the laptop fails to boot, simply displaying the black screen message “Operating System not found”. But, the really annoying part of this problem is that F2 at power on no longer takes me into BIOS set-up.

Some other relevant points:

I have tried an external keyboard to rule out an internal keyboard fault.
The Acer “splash screen” no longer displays the BIOS keystroke options message (it did before F2 stopped working).
It will not boot from the Windows DVD either – so I can’t do a fresh install.
No other key press (e.g. F6, F8 etc) do anything during start-up – still result in the same error message.

I have spent MANY HOURS researching this on the Internet and find this is not a particularly uncommon problem. But, although there are hundreds of replies with possible solutions to this problem I have not been able to find a definitive solution.

The BIOS should be the most fundamental configuration mechanism on the PC platform, and to have a situation where the user is frozen out of this seems ridiculous. I am getting really frustrated by this and I am now, reluctantly, in the brink of buying a new (obviously NOT an Acer) laptop – but still can’t help thinking this should be a resolvable problem. Where do I go from here?

Can anyone please help with this problem.

Accepted answers

All comments

-Justin

AndyH,

Not being able to boot into the BIOS is a definite problem. My questions and suggestions:

There wasn't any hardware changes that occurred before this started happening?

Perform a power reset, see if that will help you get a splash screen to boot into the BIOS. If so, reset to defaults (F9), save and exit and see if it boots up.

Some good troubleshooting and steps in this thread, if you haven't looked it over.

AndyH

Thanks for the reply.

The power reset didn’t achieve anything. Also, the thread you mention is one of the many I had trawled through before – unfortunately nothing helpful there.

Most fixes refer to BIOS reset (or something related) but the real problem here is that I cannot get into the BIOS set-up. If I could I'd have more scope to get this thing workng.

As for the question on hardware change: it is very likely.

There was a long chain of events leading to the current problem, in summary:

Several months ago I had a problem (can’t remember what exactly but is was a problem booting windows). But I was able to recover with a complete reinstall of Win 8. Working fine.
Six weeks or so ago the internal keyboard failed – replaced with a brand new one and working fine.
Just two weeks later was hit by an Operating system not found error. But was able to recover with a complete reinstall of Win 8. Working fine (including start-up splash screen prompt to press f2 – which DID work).
However, I noticed the touchpad wasn’t working (I’d been using an external keyboard and mouse previously so hadn’t noticed). Turned out that in replacing the keyboard the touchpad cable had been disconnected from the motherboard. SO, this means the touchpad was not present when I did the reinstall in step (3).
Reconnected the touchpad and the Operating System Not Found AND inability to enter BIOS setup have been present ever since. Note: not only does pressing f2 not work but the splash screen no longer display the “press f2” etc prompt. I can't be sure the two are related or happened at exactly the same time but....

Where do I go next?

-Justin

AndyH,

I would say the next step would be a repair with Acer. You will definitely want to include all the issues you posted in this thread so they understand the parts that have been having issues.

AndyH

Thanks for the reply

However, there is NO WAY I am going to pay Acer any more money for this laptop.

To have a design that allows a fault whereby the BIOS is inaccessible (the most fundamental level of configuration in a PC architecture) is, in my view, unacceptable.

In fact I have already bought (a non-Acer) replacememt. I'm still pursuing a solution to repair this one as I would quite like to use it as a desktop replacement.

As things currently stand it's a few days away from the bin and an extremely disappointed (and ex) customer!

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