"AN OPERATING SYSTEM WASN'T FOUND" AFTER RESETTING WINDOWS - ACER ASPIRE

Cyprian

Hey guys, I had the this problem,so i thought i'd give the solution that woked for me. I tried resetting my laptop initially but it got stuck after putting it off and on manually, it displayed "an operating system not found, disconnect all drives that do not contain an operating system. press cntrl + alt + del to restart".so my thinking was that something was wrong with the os since the system wasn't recognizing it. I use an acer aspire E-5 571, so I tried the acer erecovery management by pressing alt F10 as soon as the laptop starts to load but nothing happened. My laptop had previously been running on the legacy boot mode, so using F2 as soon as the laptop boots I changed the boot mode to UEFI and tried the erecovery  management this time it just got stuck, on the very first screen. Then I put an operating system disc image (iso file) into a flash drive, changed the boot priority order, allowing the drive into the first spot on the list, then rebooted in UEFI mode. It loaded a windows mini-window having install now and repair your computer. Now I had watched a lot of youtube videos based on the problem, used the command prompt so do a lot of things, make partitions active, assign, nothing worked!! And when I try installing, it doesn't work in normal install, saying I should do so when windows has loaded (I can't even get my laptop to boot up!!) in advanced mode, it says windows can't be installed on any of this partitions. I couldn't reset it from repair your computer> troubleshoot> reset, because it says the drive where windows is installed is locked (actually supprising because at this time I doubted if there was still windows installed on it after everything I had been through). At this point I was tired, exhausted, frustrated and confused. After thinking about it for a while, I resulted to unconventional means, I did it my self! So this is how it goes, I boot up the laptop in UEFI mode with the flash drive(I had formatted it before putting the windows file in it, not as an iso file but all of its content directly and with no other file in the flash), it started the mini-window, now following repair your computer>troubleshoot>advanced options >command prompt

(commands in bold)

Diskpart enter

list disk enter

select disk (the main drive) enter

clean enter (this wipes everything, clean slate or so it seemed)

Then I did a fresh install of windows with install now>(skipped the key part) advanced>(there was only one partition) I installed windows here.

It completed the installation and everything went to normal. Note I had previously backed up my files and using this as a DISCLAIMER, you do this at your own risk, although I hope it works for you too.

 

padgett

I suspect this only works if the Windows key is in the BIOS (most Acer machines are shipped this way). I use a third party program from Nirsoft (are others) to back up all keys before trying anything major but then I also take system images at regular periods.

 

This is easier because I use the old time trick of seperation of programs and systems (C: drive) from data (D: drive). Just need images o C: and regular incremental backups of . With that I just need a single recovery disk for each operating system (7, 8, 10).

 

However that is a neat trick and thank you for posting. Just be aware that DiskPart is a very powerful program and needs care in its use.