Acer r7 not booting msata after wiping oem harddrive

So I have owned my r7 for almost a year now and within the first two weeks I installed an evo840 msata running Ubuntu 14.04. It was setup as a secondary boot device accessible from the boot menu. About a week ago I was in desperate need of more storage and given how I never used Windows on the oem hard drive I wiped it from Ubuntu and created a new luks volume on it to store my things.

I suppose I did not shut the laptop down at all until it ran out of battery today, and upon booting up I am greeted with a message 'default boot device miss g or boot failed' while in uefi mode. Switching back to legacy and attempting to boot from my msata running Ubuntu I am given 'no bootable device - - insert boot disk and press any key'.

How bad of a good did I make here?

Oh, and how does one go about removing the administration bios password if it were to be forgotten?

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IronFly

i think you had Ubuntu grub on your HDD so now, the mSata is no more bootable since it's missing the boot manager.

have a look here:

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/grub

JordanB

Yeah, you might have to start over.

If your computer came pre-installed with windows 8 or 8.1, you can just do a clean install using Microsoft media (after using diskpart clean).

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/The-Cru/Reset-your-SSD-to-factory-settings-Windows-DiskPart/ba-p/162503

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

The microsoft windows 8.1 media USB installer will retrieve your Acer OEM windows key automatically from the motherboard.

If your computer came with windows 7, then disregard my suggestion.

Make sure you have your SSD unplugged when trying to get your original hard drive back to windows 8.1.

If you want to have the windows with all of the Acer apps and software, and you didn't make a factory default backup, you'd have to buy it from acer since you no longer have your recovery partition on the drive..

You can't really be booting back and forth to legacy and UEFI (if that's what you're doing)....or at least it will be complicated to do it.

If you're going to try a clean install of windows 8.1, you'll probably want to go in to bios first, and select "load administrator defaults"...or something to that effect.....and "save and exit"

Yehtrott

First, I have absolutely no intention of reinstalling Windows- 8.1 was on the laptop when I purchased it and I just refuse to use it as I truly have no need for a Windows os sitting on this laptop. It is a clunky memory hog too prone to inherent bugs nevermind being overly vulnerable to outside issues. On a skin deep level, no os is going to chose when to install updates for me when My needing access to My laptop is time sensitive. Seriously, what other os will force an update install upon boot? Try having a business meeting with a new potential client and when you power on your laptop you are forced to wait 10-20min with said client while Windows flushes any chance you had down the toilet.

When I installed Ubuntu how would the grub partition end up on the sata drive when the msata was the selected destination for installation. In addition the grub partition seems to be intact on the msata as it should be.

So, any other ideas?

IronFly

you explained better now, by the way, you wrote:

About a week ago I was in desperate need of more storage and given how I never used Windows on the oem hard drive I wiped it from Ubuntu and created a new luks volume on it to store my things.

on my little experience, the boot manager was on the HDD, not on your mSATA, since you left intact the windows installation when you installed Ubuntu on mSATA.

since you wiped the HDD completly, you had loose the boot manager.

what are the BIOS settings about UEFI/Legacy and secure boot now?

JordanB

Check for a BIOS update:

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

Yehtrott

I have altered the bios settings from uefi to legacy, in addition to trying uefi without secure boot to no avail.

I am able to see all of the necessary boot info on the msata but for some reason it is refusing to boot from this drive. I have even removed the oem hard drive with no luck in booting from msata.

I will look into flashing an update if needed but I do not believe that will fix my issue. Could be wrong in this regard though...

JordanB

On second thought, it might be safer to do a BIOS update after you get your computer running properly.

I guess I don't completelely understand everything.

You've tried using the Ubuntu boot repair cd? If not, why not?

You seem like an experienced computer user, who would have all their important files backed up anyway. Why not just re-install and be done with it?

I don't use Ubuntu but use Lubuntu. For all my answers I head straight to Ubuntu forum. But for this problem, I wouldn't bat an eye about starting over.