No bootable device problem Aspire5 a515-54G

Puraw
Puraw ACE, Member Posts: 13,191 Trailblazer
edited October 2023 in 2020 Archives
My 9 month old Acer Aspire5 a515-54G with only HDD and W10 Home turned into a "brick" after I unplugged the power cord during booting (we had a brown out). When rebooting it went into "Repair mode" without any results, I then booted with my recovery usb drive and tried to restore from external backup drive that failed (won't boot, same Repair mode) I then restored the backup image file while reformatting the HDD with same result (won't boot). Finally still with usb recovery drive I reset (factory) that completely killed the UEFI partition I think as after that I get the "No bootable device" when booting. F2 still works but there is nothing listed under Boot Order.
Acer BIOS all have SATA set as RST-Optane by default that I changed to AHCI (also my recovery usb drive). I suspect that RESET (on HDD recovery partition) is RST-Optane compatible and corrupted the AHCI settings. I tried the default BIOS and sure enough it went to RST-Optane but still get the No bootable device message when trying to boot.
We live far away from an Acer shop or any PC repair shop, thinking of disconnecting the RTC CMOS battery and checking cable connections (HDD-Battery)? Any ideas what to do with a "brick?

Answers

  • Puraw
    Puraw ACE, Member Posts: 13,191 Trailblazer
    Update: HDD failure now suspected:
    Question is will a failed POST test by BIOS because of a faulty HDD cause USB recovery drive also not being detected?
    I will test the HDD in a USB case on my spare laptop and if not working plan to buy a new HDD from Amazon, will an identical model new HDD be detected or do I have to make it bootable (format) first?
  • Puraw
    Puraw ACE, Member Posts: 13,191 Trailblazer
    All is well: Acer Service reformatted my HDD and loaded the latest drivers and W10 build 19041, no hardware issues were found, apparently it was just a corrupted boot record. Total costs $25 that I was more than happy to pay.
    Great job Acer Support Philippines!
  • Puraw
    Puraw ACE, Member Posts: 13,191 Trailblazer
    The fee was returned by Acer, all under warranty!
  • deepanshuchg
    deepanshuchg Member Posts: 10

    Tinkerer

    edited October 2020
    Is it possible to fix the corrupted boot record ourself cause I am facing the same issue and I am sure my HDD is fine because it is working fine on another computer. My laptop isn't in warranty either, though its just 2 year old. 
  • Puraw
    Puraw ACE, Member Posts: 13,191 Trailblazer
    Is it possible to fix the corrupted boot record ourself cause I am facing the same issue and I am sure my HDD is fine because it is working fine on another computer. My laptop isn't in warranty either, though its just 2 year old. 

    The culprit is the MBR boot record that easily corrupts with Apire5 in W10, my HDD also worked fine as an external HDD on another laptop but nothing would boot with it as an internal HDD. Your only solution is to turn it over to Acer and pay the $25 to reformat and load W10 and the driver bundles. After that use Acer Care Center to recover and backup not the W10 app.