Acer Aspire Switch 10 SW5-012 BIOS Boot Options Not Available

idewapura
idewapura Member Posts: 3 New User
edited July 2021 in Switch Series
I got a used Acer Aspire Switch 10 (SW5-012). The device does not load windows and says boot disk cannot be found. I've tried to load via a bootable USB by disabling secure boot to no avail. What I noticed is that F12 boot option is empty when loaded. Does not even show a hard drive or USB drive. In the Boot section, I cannot locate Windows Boot Manager as well. I was told to update the BIOS. But Acer website only provides .exe files and also I don't know how to update went the USB drive is not detected. Also, the Keyboard and the touch pad works. So that rules out the problem of connection between the two parts. Please let me know what I can get this to fix.

Best Answer

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    What bootable USB flash drive are you testing with? How was it created? I'm guessing it's not setup correctly for UEFI boot. Once you are sure the drive is correct you should be able to boot from it with your current settings. Note that your model requires the boot image to be 32bit, not 64bit. Unfortunately getting it to boot from the flash drive may only be a first step in a hard road to travel. Your system has a soldered in eMMC drive which isn't really replaceable. eMMC drives fail much earlier than the removable SATA or NVMe M.2 drives, due to their lower rewrite numbers. If you get it booting on the flash drive but are unable to install Windows then likely that drive has gone bad. :(
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.

Answers

  • idewapura
    idewapura Member Posts: 3 New User
    Some Pics of the BOIS.
  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    What bootable USB flash drive are you testing with? How was it created? I'm guessing it's not setup correctly for UEFI boot. Once you are sure the drive is correct you should be able to boot from it with your current settings. Note that your model requires the boot image to be 32bit, not 64bit. Unfortunately getting it to boot from the flash drive may only be a first step in a hard road to travel. Your system has a soldered in eMMC drive which isn't really replaceable. eMMC drives fail much earlier than the removable SATA or NVMe M.2 drives, due to their lower rewrite numbers. If you get it booting on the flash drive but are unable to install Windows then likely that drive has gone bad. :(
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • idewapura
    idewapura Member Posts: 3 New User
    Thank you. The problem was indeed 32 bit. I made a windows 8.1 32 bit bootable USB. The setup loaded automatically now. But I have a different problem now. The setup says it cannot format the driver when copying files. I get an error code. Also, I cannot install it into the second drive because it's connected via IEEE 1394 port. Pics below



  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer
    In that first screen try manually deleting each of those four partitions on the eMMC drive, then install to the unallocated area. It should create the needed partitions for you.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • Gtyrion145
    Gtyrion145 Member Posts: 2 New User
    Thank you so much for sharing it with detail images. I really love to explain the things in this way.
  • Gtyrion145
    Gtyrion145 Member Posts: 2 New User
    Thank you so much for sharing in such details. I got my solutions.
  • topogigio
    topogigio Member Posts: 3 New User
    Hello everyone 
    I have almost the same prob. i can boot win  8.1 and clean the drive but when a start the instalation it failed to copy the files. 
    some error with the drive
    i trie with linux ou hiren boot to clean and format the driver but a can't and diskpart also can't format the drive
    can some one have a idea?
    best regards
  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer
    You might have a bad drive if the installer can't clean the drive successfully. There's not a lot that can be done in that case, the drives on most of those models were eMMC and soldered to the motherboard.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • topogigio
    topogigio Member Posts: 3 New User
    hello bilsey thank you for the reply.
    yes a think the emmc is solde to mainboard
    the only partition a can acess is the recovery with a winpe
    can we run a boot from the sd card? 
    best regards 

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer
    No, you can't boot from a SD card, but you should be able to boot from USB.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • topogigio
    topogigio Member Posts: 3 New User
    thank you billsey. not easy, i don't fix the prob yet. i ru some utilities to check the ssd but is for hdd i don´t know if it read the block the same as sector

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer
    Utils that check for bad blocks and such should work just as well on a SSD as on a HDD, they are only doing file system level access, not anything down at the hardware level.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • JPeuplu
    JPeuplu Member Posts: 1 New User
    edited December 2023

    I get same problem my Acer SW05-12 is locked on windows session password loss by childrens. So I wanted to reinstall it from scratch and tryied to create USB drive with windows 10 32 bits iso.

    Bios is ready to search for a usb drive first and secure boot is disabled, each boot the computer ignore usb drive and in bios it displays only windows manager and a message:

    System doesn't have any USB boot option. please select other boot option in boot manager menu.

    I'm becoming crazy with this computer, never spend so much time to get nothing, now my nerves are irritated to a point border is really thin it goes straight to recycle bin. and to cool me down do some hammer damages on it

    If someone has a light to share, appreciated.

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer

    You must enable the boot menu in the BIOS, make sure the system is set for UEFI boot and then use the F12 key at boot to get into the menu. There you will see the Windows install flash drive. Select it as the boot source and continue with the reinstall.

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • tsisaris
    tsisaris Member Posts: 2 New User

    I would like to install Linux Porteus on my Acer Aspire SW5-012 tablet. It has an atom processor which is 64-bit but a UEFI bootloader which is 32-bit.

    I was told that I could use Grub2 and make 64-bit Linux Porteus compatible. It only has the 32-bit Windows 10. I haven't been able to get it to boot to either the 32-bit Linux Porteus or the 64-bit Linux Porteus.

    I used RUFUS to create a bootable USB for both versions. I used Grub2 to alter the EFI but it doesn't seem to stick. I need to find a cfg file to load into Grub2.

    I'm completely lost. I have had no luck.

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,206 Trailblazer

    If you use a 32 bit installer for Linux, it should just install and select the correct UEFI files. They need to be 32 bit, not 64 bit.

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.

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