Acer Swift SF114-32 no bootable device

VBrochard

Hi everyone,

A quick question regarding my options for my Acer swift SF114-32. When I turn it on, after the ACER logo, the "no bootable device" sign appears. I tried following what I found on the forum (entering the BIOS then F9 then F10 / restarting the battery) with no good results. From what I understand my computer still recognize my HDD.

Please find below the the BIOS Information and Boot panels.

Any help would be really welcome. All my work is on this computer.

Thank you in advance,

Valentin.

billsey

It sounds as if the drive could be failing. The drive's info shows up, but one or more partitions are not right. Boot from a Windows install image and use diskpart to see what partitions are there, then assign a driver letter to the EFI partition and look at the file structure. A corrupted EFI will give you that symptom. If you are unable to read the partitions on the drive then it's more likely to be hardware than software...

Easwar

Hi  VBrochard,

So you can able to get BIOS page in the unit. So please try to do reset. 

VBrochard

Hi and thank you for your answers,

@billsey do you have any tutorial that I can follow? I have never done this process before. What do I do if I find that the EFI file is corrupt?

@Easwar by reset you mean this: https://community.acer.com/en/kb/articles/98-reset-bios-or-uefi-to-default-settings ? If this is the case, yes I tried it with no success. :{

Thank you for your help,

Valentin.

Easwar

Hi VBrochard,

# Reset,

1. Turn OFF the unit.

2. Press and hold Alt+F10 keys(without releasing the keys) ---> Trun ON the unit. 

3. You will get a blue screen(Title Choose an option). (Release the keys)

4. Click troubleshoot option.

5. Click on Reset this PC.

6. Go with the option (Keep my files/Remove every thing)

7. Then follow the on screen instruction. 

Check this T/S and post the result. 

VBrochard

Hi @Easwar and thank for the prompt answer,

Alt+F10 doesn't work. Instead of a blue screen, the "no bootable device" sign appears. I tried several times but it just won't load the blue screen. : /

Any other options?

Thanks,

Valentin.

billsey

OK @VBrochard with a Windows install flash drive:

Insert the USB Flash in your PC and restart.
Boot from the media. (Typically you use the F12 option to get the boot menu. Let me know if that doesn't work)
Select Repair Your Computer (it's at the bottom of the second screen)
Select Troubleshoot
Select Advanced Options
Choose Command Prompt from the menu:
    Type and run the command:
    diskpart
    Type and run the command:
    list disk

    (Likely disk 0 will be your system disk, verify it's not the USB flash drive!)

    Type and run the command:
    sel disk 0
    Type and run the command:
    list vol
Verify that the EFI partition (EPS - EFI System Partition) is using the FAT32 file system. Assign a drive letter to it that is not already in use.):
    Type and run the command:
    sel vol <number of volume>
    Type and run the command:
    assign letter=<drive letter>:
    Type and run the command:
    exit
In order to repair the boot record:
    Type and run the command:
    cd /d <drive letter>:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\
    Type and run the command:
    bootrec /FixBoot

If the issue is just a corrupted EFI load, that will fix it. If during the "list disk" part the system drive doesn't show then we know the drive has gone bad. Let us know how it goes...

Easwar

Hi VBrochard,

If you can't boot the unit from USB then it will a hardware problem. In that case you can contact acer for repair service. 

https://customercare.acer-apac.com/CustomerSelfService/CaseBooking.aspx?CID=IN&LID=ENG 

VBrochard

Hi @Easwar, hi @billsey and thank you for the answers!

@billsey thank you very much for the details. I followed your guide and here are the results:

Insert the USB Flash in your PC and restart.
Boot from the media. (Typically you use the F12 option to get the boot menu. Let me know if that doesn't work)
Select Repair Your Computer (it's at the bottom of the second screen)
Select Troubleshoot
Select Advanced Options
Choose Command Prompt from the menu:
    Type and run the command:
    diskpart
    Type and run the command:
    list disk

    (Likely disk 0 will be your system disk, verify it's not the USB flash drive!)

=> Everything is ok so far. Disk 0 is my system disk.

    Type and run the command:
    sel disk 0
    Type and run the command:
    list vol
Verify that the EFI partition (EPS - EFI System Partition) is using the FAT32 file system. Assign a drive letter to it that is not already in use.):

=> The only volume that appears is my USB drive. I think it shouldn't be the case right?  I don't see any EFI partition. Anyway I continued step by step.

  Type and run the command:
    sel vol <number of volume>
    Type and run the command:
    assign letter=<drive letter>:
    Type and run the command:
    exit
In order to repair the boot record:
    Type and run the command:
    cd /d <drive letter>:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\
    Type and run the command:
    bootrec /FixBoot

=> Every run exept the last command. The programm says "element not found". It is because the volume selected is not the right one?

Did I do something wrong?

Thank all of you for your help!

Valentin.

billsey

You will notice the C: drive is 14GB in size even though disk 0 is 128GB. That means the system sees no partitions on the system drive at all. The only partition seen is the flash drive. Disk 0 is recognized, but with no data. I'm betting it has failed, but not so far as to no longer show up, instead it's just empty. If we instead assume the drive has somehow just been wiped, then a reinstall of the OS would fix it. If the drive is bad you are going to have to reinstall anyway. So, since you are booting to the USB drive well enough let's continue on with the Windows install instead of using the Repair option. When it gets to the place where it asks where to install Windows, select the unallocated space on the system drive (it should be the full 128GB, which will show as somewhat less than that because drive manufacturers count size different than programmers do). Let it continue through the install process and if the disk is good it should succeed. You may have to install some of the Acer drivers after the install completes, so be ready to download them on a different computer if the network drivers don't come up automatically...

VBrochard

Thank @billsey for your prompt answer. Just a quick question: in your opinion the data present in my drive are not recovarable ? In the two options that you list (disk failed or disk wiped) my data seams to be lost, aren't they? If they are not, won't a windows install from a flash drive erase them?

Thanks,

Valentin.

billsey

Yes, unfortunately. Almost anything we do at this point is going to wipe the drive clean. If you have been using cloud tools like OneDrive to mirror your documents at least that data is safe. The same thing holds if you have been doing file history backups. There are tools that will scan a drive that has been accidentally cleaned to attempt to recover partitions and it wouldn't hurt to try that. The problem is that most of those require a Windows environment, so are best handled with the drive disconnected from the machine and mounted on another machine that has Windows running. How much effort you put into recovering data instead of just getting back up and running is going to depend on how important the data is...