I think CloudReady killed my Acer Spin 111 BIOS.

NetizenMT

I had an Acer 1 Spin 111-32n- p6cv Windows 10 notebook. My 6 year old grandson needed a computer to attend online school, and his brother had a Chromebook, so of course he wanted one too. Foolish Grandpa installed CloudReady to it, either not noticing or dismissing the note that, once installed, it could not be reversed. Not a problem until today when it was decided a return to Windows 10 was desirable. Imagine my shock at finding that I can no longer get into the BIOS nor boot from any USB. Powering up with any of the traditional keys held down does nothing - ESC, F1, F2, F3, F8, F10 or F12. There is no "Powerwash" option in CloudReady, either. I have searched high and low via Google but have been unable to find a way to resolve this. Has anyone else experienced this issue and been able to fix it? Thanks in advance for any assistance provided.

billsey

My description on your model comes up SP111-32N-P6CV-US W10SHETML64OPP19SP / N4200 / BT / 4G / 64GB MMC / 2L4.67 / 11.6 / TOUCH, so the big problem is going to be the main drive is soldered in. Normally when a new OS takes over the boot process you just disconnect the drive. That allows things like getting into the BIOS and booting on a different image. In your case since you can't remove the drive we can't use that shortcut. The next step involves getting into the BIOS, and there is likely a very small window when the system will look for the key. With the laptop turned off, start mashing the DEL key over and over while you turn the laptop on. If you are lucky it'll put you into the BIOS, if not you get to try again.

Once in the BIOS you want to turn off Secure Boot and turn on the F12 boot menu. It's possible you will have to set a supervisor password before you can disable secure boot, just remember to remove it after things are working again or else it'll get forgotten. Repairing a forgotten password means a trip to the factory, so that would not be good. Once you have Secure Boot off and F12 on you save and exit. Next you need a Windows install image on a flash drive. It's likely easiest to create that on a different system. I'm guessing you started with W8 or W81. and upgraded to W10, so you'll want Windows 10 Home 64bit on the flash drive. Put the flash drive in, boot while mashing the F12 and choose the USB drive as your boot. From there you just install Windows, when it gets to the point where it asks where to put it use the tools and delete all partitions on the drive, then select the unpartitioned space and install there. Windows will create all needed partitions for you.