Aspire 5720Z oddity The kid could use a USB stick until I found another HDD.

trachys

I'm in a poor, sanctioned country. I want to get an Aspire 5720Z laptop working for my girlfriend's nephew.

The boot screen stated that the hard drive wasn't detected. Okay, fine, I eventually found a Linux distro (MX) that worked. The kid could use a USB stick until I found another HDD.

But then a strange thing happened: When the machine rebooted, it ignored the stick and tried to load Windows (Vista) on the formerly undetectable hard drive. Started, and failed: a blue screen (lots of text) flashed, and the old thing gave up.

Any insight appreciated.

[Edited the thread to add model name to the title and issue detail]

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/685349/5720z-oddity

That Acer notebook comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and you were probably on the internet, so OS on the HDD tried to download and install Vista. Boot to BIOS (F2) and reset to factory defaults.

Take the HDD out, place it in a USB external 2.5" or 3.5" HDD case (depending on the size of the HDD) and reformat it on another PC, put it back in the Acer notebook. On the other PC download the Linux ISO file to a USB stick and install that on the Acer notebook, during the installation make sure the notebook stays offline (see instructions below):

https://www.howtogeek.com/693588/how-to-install-linux/