Can not boot from USB nor NVME Acer swift 1 SF114-33

Acer swift 1 SF114-33, Intel Pentium Silver N5030 with 8 GB LPDDR4 and 256GB SSD NVME.

Hello everyone, so I received this laptop from a friend no longer need it but he kept the ssd nvme for personal data and my problem is that I can not get the laptop to boot from USB boot drive nor the nvme that has windows 10 Home installed.

The original nvme was formatted after copying the personal files, current installed nvme is not the original one, I tried m.2 sata ssd but the slot doesn't detect it, then I tried with other 2 nvme SSDs, one is a Reletech P400 512GB and the other one is a Samsung pm981 256GB, the pm981 was bought recently thinking that might need a OEM nvme for the laptop to work.

I tried putting installed windows 10 on both nvme but it won't do anything, freezed in acer logo. Also tried using several usbs with windows 10 installation in fat32 and ntfs and different linux distros with same result, stuck in acer logo or stuck at the linux distro grub background. Then I tried putting uefi shell in one usb and tried to boot the windows efi from there but same result.

A week ago I posted my problem in a different thread thinking I had the same problem but @JackE pointed out that my problem is that the efi files fromthe nvme/USBs with windows/linux aren't trusted, so the bios gets stuck in the acer logo. Anyone knows how can I get a trusted efi file for this bios? Next I am going to upload several photos with bios configuration.

Thanks in advanced!

Accepted answers

K4sey

Hello again I have good news, regarding the gpt fat32 format, yes, I tried with many usb flash drives with different programs like windows media creation tool, rufus, unetbootin, universal usb installer and yumi. Next thing I tried was to do a memory test with memtest86, I thought, could it be a faulty memory chip? Would it boot into memtest86? Used a USB 2.0 and plug it on the left usb-a port. Yes, I got in!! Why not perform the test? It took 3 hours without any errors.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/i6/cay00idmceq6.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/gp/cxdra5omqpb4.jpg

I plugged the power adapter at the beginning of the test because I didn't know how long it would take and was surprised that the laptop stayed that long and after the test, I plugged the mouse on the right usb-a port to navigate through the menu of memtest86 to restart the laptop but before I clicked on it, I decided to use a type-c usb flash drive (with windows installation) and plug it to the type-c port, the only one left.

Next was hitting F12 until the boot menu, select the type-c to boot and for the first time I could see the ring loading animation from windows, 5 seconds later the installation window popped up, later on I had another problem with the nvme, the program itself couldn't do the partition correctly, weird. That nvme had windows 10 already installed but anyway, no big deal, a search on the internet about that and solved it with diskpart in a few minutes.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/xf/v4zbs05e2xrs.jpg

Installed all necessary drivers from acer website and updated to latest bios (why not

) and I didn't change any settings from the bios to get memtest86 running. Now I can even boot linux distros without any issues even with secure boot enabled, used same usb flash drives prior memtest86. At this stage I could make a dual boot but I am afraid to screw it up, since I still don't know what problem the laptop has/had. Thanks both answers from you guys. Anyway, this thread can be closed.

All comments

AnhEZ28

@K4Sey you can try to reset the BIOS setting, and disable Fast Boot. When you want to boot from the Windows installation USB, try to wait about 5 mins

Commodore_1995#

Are you converting usb flash drive to gpt and formatting to fat32?

K4sey

Hello again I have good news, regarding the gpt fat32 format, yes, I tried with many usb flash drives with different programs like windows media creation tool, rufus, unetbootin, universal usb installer and yumi. Next thing I tried was to do a memory test with memtest86, I thought, could it be a faulty memory chip? Would it boot into memtest86? Used a USB 2.0 and plug it on the left usb-a port. Yes, I got in!! Why not perform the test? It took 3 hours without any errors.

I plugged the power adapter at the beginning of the test because I didn't know how long it would take and was surprised that the laptop stayed that long and after the test, I plugged the mouse on the right usb-a port to navigate through the menu of memtest86 to restart the laptop but before I clicked on it, I decided to use a type-c usb flash drive (with windows installation) and plug it to the type-c port, the only one left.

Next was hitting F12 until the boot menu, select the type-c to boot and for the first time I could see the ring loading animation from windows, 5 seconds later the installation window popped up, later on I had another problem with the nvme, the program itself couldn't do the partition correctly, weird. That nvme had windows 10 already installed but anyway, no big deal, a search on the internet about that and solved it with diskpart in a few minutes.

Installed all necessary drivers from acer website and updated to latest bios (why not

) and I didn't change any settings from the bios to get memtest86 running. Now I can even boot linux distros without any issues even with secure boot enabled, used same usb flash drives prior memtest86. At this stage I could make a dual boot but I am afraid to screw it up, since I still don't know what problem the laptop has/had. Thanks both answers from you guys. Anyway, this thread can be closed.

Commodore_1995#

Can you check by trying to install windows on a hard drive?

K4sey

egydiocoelho said:

Can you check by trying to install windows on a hard drive?

There is no sata port to connect a hard drive, only a m.2 nvme slot.

Commodore_1995#

How did you manage to install windows 10, can you check ssd health with crystaldiskinfo program?

billsey

Did you put the iRST drivers on the install image, then load them at the disk/partition prompt during your Windows install attempt? If they are loaded the drive should show up as an option for the install. Make sure you wipe any existing partitions and have the installer use the full unallocated portion of the disk so it creates the appropriate partitions for a normal UEFI boot.

K4sey

egydiocoelho said:

How did you manage to install windows 10, can you check ssd health with crystaldiskinfo program?

Just as usual as other laptops/desktops. The problem was that it couldn't boot anything from the nvme nor the bootable usb drives but that problem is solved and the laptop is working properly now. Here is the screenshot from crystaldiskinfo.

K4sey

billsey said:

Did you put the iRST drivers on the install image, then load them at the disk/partition prompt during your Windows install attempt? If they are loaded the drive should show up as an option for the install. Make sure you wipe any existing partitions and have the installer use the full unallocated portion of the disk so it creates the appropriate partitions for a normal UEFI boot.

Ah no but I know what you mean because I watched a video doing that while searching a solution. I used the latest version of windows 10 (21H2) and maybe it already has the acer drivers to detect nvme ssds. My next problem was that the installation program of windows 10 couldn't partition correctly even wiping the whole drive, error was like: We couldn't Create a new partition or locate an existing one. But that was solved using diskpart, before somebody ask if the ssd was in gpt or mbr, it was always in gpt, the nvme had a clean working windows 10 home in it already and we are in 2022, who still uses mbr now? Now the laptop works fine.

How can I close this thread?