Acer Aspire E5-551g not restarting properly

Hello,

I have an Acer Aspire E5-551G-t0jn laptop which has not been restarting properly after upgrading to windows10.

The laptop WILL boot up if I press and hold the powerkey until it cycles off, or do a SHUT DOWN instead. However, when I just perform a reboot it simply hangs at the Acer logo indefinitely. I performed a clean install of windows 10 and the problem persisted. I then installed a linux distro alongside windows 10 and the issue persists there too, so I'm not certain it's just windows 10. However, until the upgrade, 8.1 and my linux partition both restarted fine without hassle.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Accepted answers

sparked

The problem was the Intel Ultimate-n 6300 Wireless Nic I installed to replace the buggy Atheros one, since swapping back everything works as should. I never suspected the wireless nic could be the problem, but it turns out that particular card and Acer's E5 551G laptops do not get along and resulted in the laptop hanging at post after rebooting.

All comments

-Justin

sparked,

You might want to run a disc check and memory check to make sure there are no problems.

sparked

Thanks, I ran both of them and both checked out okay. with no errors found. The laptop is relatively new (still under a year old). I don't know if I mentioned upon doing a clean install of win10 I deleted all partitions except the one labled "RECOVERY". There was an unnamed mystery partition that I assumed was placed there by Ubuntu during it's install, so I deleted that as well. So maybe that was important?

Though, I've wiped and repartitioned drives many times before without ever encountering this problem on other laptops, so I don't think that would be the reason i'm experiencing this now. However that's the only thing I can think of that changed. I don't remember if this happened after upgrading to win10 before the clean install, or not since that was very short lived for other reasons with win10 and amd catalyst. I know it did not happen with win8.1.

However, it also never happened before with Ubuntu 14.04 and now it does with that too.

-Justin

sparked,

I checked one of our support notebooks and it has a system recovery partition, a system reserved partition, and a C partition, all of which are needed to work correctly. Do you remember if you deleted the system reserved partition? If so, that could be the reason why it is not working correctly. Worst case scenario, use your recovery media and put 8.1 back on it, upgrade to 10, and see if you have the same problems.

sparked

Ugh. I probably did. I wiped everything except the recovery partition. Though I don't get why the reserved partition is needed. I've done this same process with many laptops before and wiped the entire disk, then repartitioned and installed, and only on the acer laptop found this issue.

Is there any way aside from reisntalling 8.1, then upgrading to 10? That's extremely time consuming since 8.1 takes a while to install, then i have to upgrade to 10, and then because i had issues with the upgrade that were resolved by the clean install, i'd have to clean install 10, and then finally put everything back on it. Seems like there should be a way to just shrink the windows partition, create a new one and copy the reserved partition to it, if that's all that's causing it. It's like if I upgraded my hdd, there's no way i'd have the reserved partition so, I don't know why Acer would have this configuration if that's indeed what's causing it.

IronFly

if you press ALT+F10 are you able to enter Acer recovery?

if not, you have 2 ways to re-install windows 8.1

download the installation media from Microsoft website

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

or

buy Acer erecovery disks/usb

Acer recovery media
if you are in the US you can buy it:
http://store.acer.com/store/aceramer/en_US/eRecovery

if you are outside the US, you must call/email your regional Acer support service:
http://www.acer.com/worldwide/support/

sparked

Okay I don't think we're all on the same page here. So i'm going to recap a bit to try to pull us all together. I apologize for being confusing sometimes.

The reserved partition from what I can tell is created during the windows install right?

If so, then I should have that. I haven't deleted any partitions after installing, only during the installation did I delete all partitions save the original recovery partition. There was a mystery partition with no name, that was also deleted. If that was the reserved created by windows, it should have been remade during the installation process.

So where i'm at..

I can boot into windows just fine, but only from a cold boot. The problem arises when I try to initiate a soft REBOOT from the start menu, or if windows updates and asks me to reboot. When that happens, the computer goes down normally, but when it comes back up it hangs at the acer logo and the OS fails to load, it doesn't look like it even tries to load the OS. There's no message, just the ACER logo indefinitely. At which point I am forced to power off the computer via hard shutdown using the power button until the machine goes down and then turn it back on so that it will load the OS.

sparked

Okay, so I used the installation media for windows and reinstalled it, this time paying close attention I ensured that the system reserved partition was infact created during installation. So all of the partitions are present. The problem still persists.

IronFly

ok, now it's clear.

HDD or SSD?

on BIOS, the first bootable device is window boot manager?

have you tried to turn off Fast startup under power options/choose what power button...(on the left side of power options panel)

disconnect every USB device connected before rebooting, if any.

sparked

Thanks for the reply, IronFly. I appologize for my late responses, I'm in the middle of classes so I'm usually pretty swamped and tend to forget to check back.

It's an HDD. Windows bootmanager is priority. I'll try to reboot real quick taking my usb mouse out. I haven't considered that since I don't een really think about it being there.

edit: Okay, I just rebooted after removing all usb devices and it's a no go. It still hangs at the acer logo. So I went into bios and double checked the boot configuration and windows boot manager is infact first in the priority list. I did notice though when exiting bios, the computer does reboot normally as it should. It's just rebooting from windows that causes it to hang there. I don't have Ubuntu on my hdd anymore since I just deleted all partitions. So nothing should be interfereing.

I'm really stumped here. I also noticed during my installs that the very

first reboot the windows installer does works, but the every reboot after it hangs, including the other installation reboot. It reboots two or three times dring installation if I remember correctly. So i'm confused. I thought bios issue maybe, but I just don't know now.

IronFly

have you tried this?

have you tried to turn off Fast startup under power options/choose what power button...(on the left side of power options panel)

disconnect every USB device connected before rebooting, if any.

sparked

Yeah. I tried all that last time, but I think maybe I have a clue what could possibly be an issue.

When ubuntu installed, it didn't overwrite mbr like it used to and instead ubuntu became an f12 boot menu item. So, 'm thinking maybe it just altered the EFI boot settings instead to preserve mbr, but when I deleted everything maybe that setting didn't change, and when rebooting it's looking for something and not finding it?

I would just use the bios option to restore the efi boot settings, but i don't want lock myself out of windows now that the semester is really under way.

sparked

nevermind on that. I got into bios and realized I had somehow jumbled up what I'd seen in there. I had the options to restore boot settings to default mixed up with efi secure boot, which has it's own reset to default option. Anyway, that shouldn't be the issue. I was too tired to fix my post last night, so I'm out of ideas here again. I've tried everything.

sparked

Still no fix for this yet. Getting kind of old at this point, especially with win10's automatic update scheduling times to reboot leaving my laptop running full blast hung in the boot process.

IronFly

if you restart to safe mode, it hangs too?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2984712/windows/how-to-enter-windows-10s-safe-mode.html

Bryane

Have you tried bios update if one is available ? Also, Did you set UEFI config in windows 10 ? could be a possibility?

sparked

I haven't tried safemode. It didn't occure to me to try it, but I don't have much hope for that as currently when attempting a reboot from Ubuntu it hangs too. Which makes me think it's not specifically with Windows. @ Ironfly.

As far as bios updates, i'm running the most current bios version as far as I know. I check periodically since I thought this may be a bios issue as well. Also I didn't set any UEFI settings manually, honestly didn't even know i could or had to. Right now though.. I'm not sure what could be the issue. Could it be an issue with ram needing reseated or something? Windows detects the full amount, but Ubuntu does not. It's odd and probably unrelated. I was thinking perhaps it had something to do with my EFI boot partition that windows setup. Since at boot I can press F12 and my options are Ubuntu or Windows and it seems I can skip grub all together if i select windows, I'm assuming that there's a boot partition getting read at bootup. Any idea if that's true and if so is it possible that there's a specific entry for restart that may be incorrect somehow?

IronFly

i think it's worth a try to boot with just one ram stick and switch between the two.

Bryane

Here is some info on Ubuntu Dual Boot Configuration with Windows regarding partition configuration. Make sure your harddisk is within these guidelines. Could be your boot issues...

Depending on your use case give each OS enough space for its own system and applications (the below numbers are the minimum system requirements, so you should multiply them by a factor that is comfortable for your use case)
• Windows 10 : 20 GB
• Windows 8 : 20 GB
• Windows 7 : 20 GB
• Windows Vista : 15 GB
• Windows XP : 4 GB
• Ubuntu Desktop : 4 GB
• Ubuntu Server : 1 GB
Note: Ubuntu also needs a swap partition of a size described here.
The rest of the disk (-10%) can be given to a data partition formatted to NTFS from gparted See note below so that you arrive at the following lay-out:

Then:
• Install Windows
• Create all your users under Windows
• Install Ubuntu
• Create all your users under Ubuntu giving them both the same name and the same password as under Windows.
• Boot the Ubuntu Live CD again and run gparted and shrink both Windows and Ubuntu partitions until they take 2*-3* the amount of the pale yellow bar. Then create the data partition and format it to "ntfs"
• mount this partition in your fstab (E.g. /Data)
• Move the your data directories to the /Data mount point by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and copy-paste each line followed by Enter (replace "UserName" by your user name):
• md /Data/UserName
• md /Data/UserName/{bin,Desktop,Documents,Downloads,Music,Pictures,Public,Templates,Videos}
• mv /home/UserName/bin /Data/UserName/bin
• mv /home/UserName/Desktop /Data/UserName/Desktop
• mv /home/UserName/Documents /Data/UserName/Documents
• mv /home/UserName/Downloads /Data/UserName/Downloads
• mv /home/UserName/Music /Data/UserName/Music
• mv /home/UserName/Pictures /Data/UserName/Pictures
• mv /home/UserName/Public /Data/UserName/Public
• mv /home/UserName/Templates /Data/UserName/Templates
• mv /home/UserName/Videos /Data/UserName/Videos
•
Make symbolic links.
•
• ln -s /Data/UserName/bin/ bin
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Desktop/ Desktop
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Documents/ Documents
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Downloads/ Downloads
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Music/ Music
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Pictures/ Pictures
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Public/ Public
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Templates/ Templates
• ln -s /Data/UserName/Videos/ Videos
• Go to Windows again and move the user directories to your drive in the users directory.
Why?
When you boot into Windows (or Ubuntu), both Windows and Ubuntu have their own system files and applications installed in their own environment. On top of that, you don't have to worry about which file goes where: All Ubuntu files can be found under Windows in the d:\home directory and all your Windows files can be found under the /users directory.
If you use any of the following commands under Windows or under Ubuntu: * chown, chmod, cacls, cacls * if you use any of the file managers to right-click on directories or files to use set permissions
Do not set permissions from inside Windows in the \home nor from inside Ubuntu on the /Users directory ever! Also, do not move files between /users and /home (or \home and \Users) ever! Only copy files!
Why is there 10% unallocated space on your drive? Well, that's a little trick when your PC is brand new: you don't need all that space, and that is just your proverbial spare tire if you ever need to extend one of the other partitions when they run flat! ;-)

sparked

Alright, I'll give this a shot this weekend when I have some time to disassemble this. I wish Acer had fitted this machine with an easy access panel for ram.

sparked

Thank you for all these tips. It's good to know these things. The partition scheme shouldn't be an issue though, I split my 1tb drive almost down the middle allocating around 600GB to windows and 400GB to ubuntu, I can't remember the exact numbers but it's close to that which should be plenty for both operating systems to thrive and grow over time given my usage.

edit: I did realize i am not actually up to date on bios patches, but the only new one addresses lcd noise issues, which i'm not exactly sure what they mean. Noise as in an audible tone or noise as in fuzzy image.

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