Nitro5 an515-52 win10 re-install keeps restarting

arn8

Hello! Yesterday i bought a new HDD for my acer laptop because i wanted a clean install of windows on it but still have the files. Put the HDD in the laptop, set it up tried it out with a few files, worked nicely. After that i opened the acer care center and hit the reset windows (or wahtever the windows reinstall button is called ). I selected to completely wipe the data with the installation and let it do its thing. After around 3 hours the install % hit 100, the pc restarted a few times and got stuck in a loop where the acer logo pops up, loads a bit , the blue windows installation sceen apears for about a single frame ,shutds down , reastarts and reapeats this cycle endlessly.

First a tried putting the old HDD in, maybe some important files are on there for windows, didnt help. Second a let it start up with a win10 usb in, same result. Tried entering the bios but it doesnt even get to that step it seems to me.
I ahve no idea what i did wrong or what went wrong and i fear this is gonna be an expensive repair job or e-waste bin

JackE

OK. with the old drive installed.. Make sure the D2D option is enabled in the BIOS MAIN tab. Then shut the machine off again. Then press and hold the ALT key. While still holding the ALT key, short press the power button to turn machine back on and IMMEDIATELY start tapping the F10 key while still holding the ALT key.

Does the factory reset or recovery menu re-appear? If so, do another reset either trying to save your personal files or an erase everything reset. Your choice.

JackE

»»Hello! Yesterday i bought a new HDD for my acer laptop because i wanted a
clean install of windows on it but still have the files. Put the HDD in
the laptop, set it up tried it out with a few files, worked nicely.
After that i opened the acer care center

How did you clone or migrate from the old drive to the new drive?

arn8

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1187861#Comment_1187861

didnt move anything to the new drive, i wanted a clean one in the machine. I simply copied everything i needed to the old, original one and replaced it.

JackE

Then how did you install Windows on the new drive?

arn8

This model came with an ssd and an hdd. Windows and acer care center were on the ssd. I only replaced the hdd

JackE

Please post a phone photo of the BIOS INFORMATION tab with only the SSD installed —- with no old HDD or new HDD connected.

arn8

Cant, its stuck installing windows. As i turn it on acer logo pops up loading, than windows installation screen shows for 1/60 of a second than starts over again, i cant get into bios as far as i know

JackE

Press and hold power button machine shuts off. Then press and hold F2 key. While still holding F2 key, short press power button turn machine back on.

arn8

I hope this is what you are looking for

JackE

Yeah. That's it. As suspected, you have a RAIDed boot drive. This complicates matters when trying to change drives. When you did the factory reset, it was probably looking for the exact same HDD secondary drive that was originally factory shipped. Now the boot drive's EFI partition is probably messed up and won't boot with the old HDD anymore either.

Check the BIOS MAIN or ADVANCED tabs. Do you have an option to change SATA drive interface from RAID or iRST to AHCI mode?

arn8

yes i do have the option. Its RST with Optane. After i change it should i just let it restart and do its thing?

JackE

STOP. DON'T ANYTHING OR CHANGE ANY BIOS SETTINGS YET. I'll be back in about 10 mins on next steps. Meanwhile, put the old drive back in. Button back up.

arn8

ᴏᴋᴀʏ old drive is back with no bios change

JackE

OK. with the old drive installed.. Make sure the D2D option is enabled in the BIOS MAIN tab. Then shut the machine off again. Then press and hold the ALT key. While still holding the ALT key, short press the power button to turn machine back on and IMMEDIATELY start tapping the F10 key while still holding the ALT key.

Does the factory reset or recovery menu re-appear? If so, do another reset either trying to save your personal files or an erase everything reset. Your choice.

arn8

So i got to the repair screen, and i just need to give the admin password which i have no idea about because i only have 1 user on this pc and its password is not the correct one. Never changed or set up any other passwords on this system. What can i do?

arn8

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1187941#Comment_1187941

nevermind it was just nothing…

arn8

It has started teh resetting proces tahnk you for the help! Can you explain what how and why did i mess up and what to do that i dont repeat what i just did?

JackE

If the recovery successfully completes with the old drive, then you'll have a decision to make on how you want to setup the new drive. The easier way. Or perhaps the somewhat harder way. I'd prefer seeing if the easier way works first, then go from there if you think you may want to tinker with the drives again at some future time.

I sorta alluded to the reason. The factory recovery software was probably looking for the old factory installed HDD when you tried to do the factory reset from the Acer Care Center. But the old drive wasn't there anymore. Just the new drive. The new UEFI BIOS doesn't usually tolerate that sort of thing as easily as the old time Legacy BIOS in the Win7 era and earlier machines. Allegedly a security thing for security risks that are probably so low that ordinary users really shouldn't worry too much about them.. So the ordinary user usually have to jump through more hoops and suffer more headaches trying to make any hardware changes whatsoever in a UEFI BIOS machine. Isn't that wonderful?

arn8

Thank you so much! I was thinking in the right place with the old drive having some files for the re-install.
But new problem i cannot log in. on the login screen at first i only could type in a username and password combination where nothing i could think of worked. Now i managed to enable the admin accaunt. Now the login screen takes me instantly to log into the admin accaunt ,no passwrod , no other options. When i click sign in a message saying “this accaunt is disabled” pops up and i cant log in.

tried safe mode once but it was wierd , search bar and windows menu didnt work , nothing happened when i clicked them. Tried the recycle bin to maybe acces an explorer from there but it had an error with wrong pointer.

JackE

»»>But new problem i cannot log in. on the login screen at first i only
could type in a username and password combination where nothing i could
think of worked»»

Did you perhaps try ‘admin’ as the user and ‘admin’ as the password? Case sensitive ‘Acer’ is also possible for setups & resets.