Changing SATA mode on Acer Aspire 5 A515-51G-37K9

VyZi
VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
edited August 2021 in Aspire Laptops
I wanted to change the SATA mode on my Acer Aspire A515-51G-37K9 however the option is hidden

I have tried probably every possible thing

I set the supervisor password, tried Ctrl+S on every tab, yet nothing worked

My BIOS is InsydeH20 Rev. 5.0.0 v1.09

Thread was edited to add model name to the title


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  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓
    Go to this link. Download, unzip and install BIOS v1.20 only with laptop battery near 100% charge and plugged in. Do NOT try to install any other BIOS version.


    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    JackE said:
    Go to this link. Download, unzip and install BIOS v1.20 only with laptop battery near 100% charge and plugged in. Do NOT try to install any other BIOS version.


    Thanks, it worked, legacy still doesn't see any bootable device for some reason though, but that's at least one problem solved, also do you maybe have any idea why legacy doesn't detect any boot devices? 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    edited August 2021
    What are you trying to do in legacy mode? You risk corrupting the boot drive if you try to install anything on it in legacy BIOS mode. Legacy BIOS cannot see or recognize a bootable GPT partitioned device.

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    JackE said:
    What are you trying to do in legacy mode? You risk corrupting the boot drive if you try to install anything on it in legacy BIOS mode. Legacy BIOS cannot see or recognize a bootable GPT partitioned device.
    I've tried to downgrade and UEFI doesn't see the USB anymore even though it did not even a year ago, legacy detects the USB but gives the no boot disk error
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Downgrade to what?

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    JackE said:
    Downgrade to what?
    Triple-boot Windows 2000, Windows XP 64x and Windows 7 64x, I'm 100% sure that's possible as I made alot of testing in VMs
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Sorry VMs are irrelevant since they don't boot directly from a UEFI bootstrapper. They can however virtually boot as guests on a UEFI bootstrapped host operating system on a GPT partitioned HDD or SSD. I too currently have Win98SE, WinXP, SuSE Linux, Win7 all  running as 32-bit operating systems on single GPT partitioned drive but only as guests under a host UEFI booted operating system.

    Win2000, WinXP & Win7 can only boot directly from legacy BIOS overlay on an MBR partitioned boot disk, not GPT. Legacy BIOS will not recognize a GPT partitioned disk as a bootable device. You can however convert the GPT disk to an MBR disk but you must take preliminary steps to preserve the data on the disk before attempting it because all will be lost in the conversion.

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    edited August 2021
    JackE said:
    Sorry VMs are irrelevant since they don't boot directly from a UEFI bootstrapper. They can however virtually boot as guests on a UEFI bootstrapped host operating system on a GPT partitioned HDD or SSD. I too currently have Win98SE, WinXP, SuSE Linux, Win7 all  running as 32-bit operating systems on single GPT partitioned drive but only as guests under a host UEFI booted operating system.

    Win2000, WinXP & Win7 can only boot directly from legacy BIOS overlay on an MBR partitioned boot disk, not GPT. Legacy BIOS will not recognize a GPT partitioned disk as a bootable device. You can however convert the GPT disk to an MBR disk but you must take preliminary steps to preserve the data on the disk before attempting it because all will be lost in the conversion.
    That's what I thought honestly, I feel a bit dumb about forgetting the fact that 32x systems can't run on GPT haha, WinXP and Win7 shouldn't be affected by this though cause I'm trying to boot the 64x editions, yet still UEFI doesn't seem to find anything bootable on the USB

    Also if you mean about how the USB is partitioned, I tried 2000 on MBR Legacy, XP64x and 7 64x GPT UEFI, none worked though
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Let me try to be more clear. None of the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows versions BEFORE Windows 8x can directly boot from a UEFI bootstrapper on a GPT partitioned disk. 

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    JackE said:
    Let me try to be more clear. None of the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows versions BEFORE Windows 8x can directly boot from a UEFI bootstrapper on a GPT partitioned disk. 
    Oh, so if I actually want to downgrade will it be okay to just create 3 MBR partitions and install the OS' on them? Or just create one big one and then make several in the setup just like everyone in the 10s did while dual or triple booting?
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Most Windows versions before Win8x also required a hidden primary 'system reserved'  MBR partition in addition to the primary C : \  MBR boot partition. The maximum number of primary MBR partitions is four.

    So no, you do not have the same flexibility of a GPT partition scheme where more than four primary partitions are allowed.

    Furthermore, because the A515-51G has updated hardware that was not yet invented when the earlier Windows versions were supported, many hardware drivers will be missing thus rendering the hardware inoperable. Win7, WinXP etc are no longer supported and driver updates will no longer be written.

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    JackE said:
    Most Windows versions before Win8x also required a hidden primary 'system reserved'  MBR partition in addition to the primary C : \  MBR boot partition. The maximum number of primary MBR partitions is four.

    So no, you do not have the same flexibility of a GPT partition scheme where more than four primary partitions are allowed.

    Furthermore, because the A515-51G has updated hardware that was not yet invented when the earlier Windows versions were supported, many hardware drivers will be missing thus rendering the hardware inoperable. Win7, WinXP etc are no longer supported and driver updates will no longer be written.
    Alright, got it, ye I know that it may be inoperable but hey, maybe it will be usable, I need to convert from GPT to MBR tho which sucks, I backed up the most Important 50GB of data like photos from holidays etc. on a pendrive, but I had 300GB of some other stuff like Desktop Downloads and game data which I trew on a different partition, and of course I can't upload it to a cloud as this would take forever, probably error midway and wouldn't upload, I wonder if I can convert a GPT partition to MBR without deleting it and all the data on it, this would save me alot of time to be honest, because otherwise I would have to drop some data to C:, shrink the partition, expand C: and do the same thing about ten times, (I don't have extremely large disk that's why I can't drop all the files at once) and then delete the partition, make a MBR one, and drop all the 300GB of data on it again
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Sure it can be done but with risks. Simply google 'gpt to mbr without data loss'. There are a number of utilities like Aoemi and Easeus that can do this but they are usually not freeware for the safest ones.

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    edited August 2021
    JackE said:
    Sure it can be done but with risks. Simply google 'gpt to mbr without data loss'. There are a number of utilities like Aoemi and Easeus that can do this but they are usually not freeware for the safest ones.

    You are a legend dude! Thank you very much!
    Imma gonna try this when I get home
    If I'll ever do a guide about this triple-boot, I'll be sure to credit you!
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    Good luck!  :)

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    I have another problem now, cause legacy never detects a boot USB and always gives the no boot device error, even tho the USB and BIOS is all set correctly, maybe it's because of my drive being GPT, but I don't wanna wait like 3 days for it to convert to get disappointed, because what if the error will still be here
  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    VyZi said:
    I have another problem now, cause legacy never detects a boot USB and always gives the no boot device error, even tho the USB and BIOS is all set correctly, maybe it's because of my drive being GPT, but I don't wanna wait like 3 days for it to convert to get disappointed, because what if the error will still be here
    Every system below 7 gives the error*
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    BIOS cannot boot from a bootable GPT-scheme USB drive, only from a bootable MBR-scheme USB drive.

    Jack E/NJ

  • VyZi
    VyZi Member Posts: 55 Troubleshooter
    edited August 2021
    JackE said:
    BIOS cannot boot from a bootable GPT-scheme USB drive, only from a bootable MBR-scheme USB drive.
    Forgot to mention the USB is MBR-scheme, was able to boot FreeDOS and Windows 7 (which instantly gave me an error but always something), but that would be about it

    (Trying to boot the Windows 2000 setup right now btw (pretty sure it's possible as I was able to run 98 trough FreeDOS, it returned a "Not enough free Extended/XMS memory to run setup" error tho))
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,869 Trailblazer
    It might be helpful if you could reveal what the error message was.

    Jack E/NJ