Aspire E5-551 Fresh Install on SSD Hell

Hoping you guys can help. So I bought a Aspire E5-551 on amazon second hand. Had a fresh Windows 8.1 on it. Turn it on, mess around, everything seems fine if not slow due to the HDD. Pop in a new SSD I bought that tested OK on with another computer. Install Windows 8.1 Via USB. It get to the part will it tell me to restart, upon restart it will always hang at getting ready or some such thing. I let it set for hours, even the spinning icon stropped spinning. So I reset the laptop via the power button. I get the error "The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error" and tell me to restart. It will keep doing this no matter how many times I click restart. Never had this issues with all the other computers or laptops I ever installed 8.1 one but the internet has a solution. While the "The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error" is on screen you can bring up cmd line via shift+f10 and bring up regedit. The fix is to go to HKLocal machine/SYSTEM/SETUP/STATUS/ChildCompletion and change the setup.exe key to 3. After this I'll get some issues with blank screens upon restart but after 1 or 2 reboots i get to my desktop. Though the desktop doesn't have all the apps and things a fresh windows install comes with. Like IE is not even listed on the start menu. Looks like a halve baked install or something. But everything is fine. While like this I can reboot the machine a bunch. Click around, seems okay. Seems like all is well till I start installing drivers. Ill go installing drivers then the machine will stop responding to clicks but the mouse still moves around. When I reboot it like this Ill get struck at "getting ready" and i'll never be able to get to my desktop again. Now I can get into safe mode and Ill uninstall all the drivers but when I try to do a regular boot ill just hang at "getting ready'. If anyone has some info for me i'd be so thankful. I'm so tired of pulling out my hair over this.

Accepted answers

Fahrenheit

I'm not 100% sure. I think it might be a RAM issues for 2 things. First the ram shows 6gb with 1.45 usable in windows. The bios show 6gb. Stock it came with 4gb, im assuming the owner before me put in an upgrade stick or something. So between them too things I think its got a bad memery stick.

Even with the orignal hard drive, factery restored, it will lock up after some time. At this point i'm super furstrated and i'm going to return it.

Thanks for all the help though.

All comments

IronFly

The windows 8.1 installation was from the Acer media recovery or Microsoft iso?

Fahrenheit

Even tried the official MS tool that downloaded the files fresh from the severs. No change in outcome.

IronFly

after the first reboot at the end of installation, did you disconnect every USB device?

have you tried to press windows key logo or ALT+TAB and check if any popup need confirmation on background?

if you stll have the original HDD intact, boot from it, create a recovery media (this will create an Acer windows 8.1 installation media), completly wipe the SSD (i suggest to use diskpart with clean command), then boot from the Acer windows 8.1 media.

Fahrenheit

I alt tabbed a few times to try, nothing seems to need a click. Will the Acer boot disk bring all the bloat with it? Like Mcafee and whatnot? If all else fails that might end up as my only option

IronFly

Yep, Acer installation will have all the default Acer applications.

Fahrenheit

Just popped the HDD back in. I dunno what happened but it says it cant recover and i have no restore points to recover from. Am I SOL at this point?

IronFly

are you able to boot to desktop?

Fahrenheit

Not with the original hard drive

IronFly

not good.

with the original HDD inside, boot to BIOS pressing F2, now go to the exit tab and select load setup default, sve and exit and try to boot.

if you are not still able to boot, if you have any external USB HDD dock or box, i suggest you to check if the Aer recovery partition is available (normally a partition around 15GB), clone it to an USB pen, mark the cloned partition as bootable and try to re-install. (you need to completly wipe the HDD)

Fahrenheit

Looks like the recovery partition is intact. How do go about cloning it to a usb drive? One other oddity i noticed is when I'd get into windows it would show 6gb of ram but then say only 1.5gb usable, is this some sort of ram issue thats giving me all this grief?

IronFly

about ram, check on BIOS the total amount available, if you have direct access to ram sticks, take them off and reseat them.

if recovery seems ok, put back the HDD, then boot pressing ALT+F10, touch wood and hope that Acer erecovery boot, so you can install straight from recovery.

if it can't boot from ALT+F10....

About cloning:

1) creating an USB bootable media:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html

2) if you have a working windows installation:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Fahrenheit

ok im restoring from the recovery now. When I get back into windows how do i make a bootable usb drive with the acer drive ?

IronFly

search for Acer erecovery program, launch it and follow instructions.

Fahrenheit

Ok I made the restore disk, installed SSD, installed windows from the install disc. Eveything seems fine. Restarted it a few times, all is well. Then it hard locks and upon reboot won;t get into windows. Just has the spinning icon under the windows logo.

I have to say at this point i'm just about done with this laptop. I never had issues like this with any laptop I ever owned. I've reinstalled windows 12 times on this machine and still dont have a working laptop.

IronFly

strange issue, i'm thinking if some windows update breaks a drivers.

Fahrenheit

I'm not 100% sure. I think it might be a RAM issues for 2 things. First the ram shows 6gb with 1.45 usable in windows. The bios show 6gb. Stock it came with 4gb, im assuming the owner before me put in an upgrade stick or something. So between them too things I think its got a bad memery stick.

Even with the orignal hard drive, factery restored, it will lock up after some time. At this point i'm super furstrated and i'm going to return it.

Thanks for all the help though.

IronFly

At this point it's a ram stick issue.

you need to open the back cover completly to check if a ram stick became loose.

Fahrenheit

I was thinking about doing that, but its a used laptop and if i go in and break something I won't be able to return it. Was thinking of getting another E5 but with the i5 and Geforce graphics. Just sitting here thumbing over if I wanna tempt fait by getting another acer to try and install an SSD on