Acer travelmate win 11 hangs on ACER logo on restart

Travelmate was working just fine, I loaded Photoshop elements 9 from a USB DVD reader which completed successfully and asked for restart to complete. It now just hangs on ACER logo screen. All attempts by the laptop to fix this loading problem fail and the BIOS has most of the useful stuff unavailable (e.g. only boot from windows, no USB option) . I understand I can set a supervisor password and disable secure boot that might enable me to restore from a full AOMEI backup? Since mouse on BIOS options, USB port (I can write the BIOS to USB OK) all work and I find it hard to believe that Photoshop trashed the entire Win11 system so I am hoping for a quicker fix? All help much appreciated.

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Commodore_1995#

Hello! What happens when you press alt+f10 before the acer logo?

asw28

Alt F10 gets a 225 error, device not connected needs repair including restore from USB which the BIOS does not have as a boot option. So Catch-22. Even though I set the supervisor password and enabled F12 I don't seem to get around the secure boot garbage and have USB boot as an option.

asw28

According to ACER support the only way to get additional boot options beyond the single Windows boot manager is to set a supervisor password. I had already done that and F2,F10,F12 in bios still have all the secure boot stuff greyed out and no, I repeat, no added option to boot from USB or DVD. BIOS is 1.3 and no indication that bios 1.5 will fix the issue. Essentially having a full system back up is useless if you can't boot it.

My question: the hanging at ACER logo screen -is that past the BIOS completely and into Windows 11 or is it some kind of firmware in between?

Will a Windows reset (which presumably will clear all loaded software while reinstalling WIn11) fix the problem? I have little faith in this as it is likely rife with other SW bugs.

Removing the SSD adding it to a desktop PC and restoring from the full system backup seems the only way to retain everything and that assumes the Travelmate BIOS etc is not the problem.

Thoughts?

billsey

You can boot from a USB stick, using the Windows boot manager, as long as the stick is setup for UEFI. Your drive looks like it's corrupted, likely in the EFI files. Boot from a Windows install image flash drive and use the repair mode to rebuild the EFI partition and try again. The only reason to disable secure boot is to boot from an EFI file that isn't signed, such as a EFI virus. If the app you installed is something like a cracked version, it might have tried to install a virus in the EFI, which would fail to boot until you disable secure boot. Not a good idea…

asw28

The Adobe Photoshop Elements I installed is extremely unlikely a 'cracked' version -it has the Adobe cardboard box, inner plastic box with Windows and MAC dvds and comes with all the extra stuff they try to give you, a long installation password and nothing unusual on the successful install. The BIOS was the default when I loaded it so no disabled secure boot at that time. It came from a reputable store and Bitdefender didn't give any virus warning. I have run out of time on this but I will update on progress.

Many thanks for our help!

billsey

Then the Elements install is very unlikely to have tried to make changes to your EFI file. Something else has it corrupted…

asw28

I can't say I am too impressed with Win11 given my experience so far and the infuriating in-your-face marketing bloatware everywhere including startup. I have downloaded a Win 11 ISO (and checksummed it) now. Unfortunately it was my wife's laptop and her patience with my attempts had run out. So it went back to where I bought it and the techies there promptly reset windows (for free) with an external ISO (the internal ACER reset Win route has given them problems they said) -a last resort for me as I was unsure whether it was a Win11 issue or a hang at the firmware/BIOS ACER logo display -plus you lose all installed programs. It now works after much cursing at getting rid of all the marketing garbage and unwanted bloatware and reinstalling stuff so the question I now have is, given their reinstall of windows was from a generic ISO, why is there still an ACER logo displayed? if it's not from the BIOS but windows why is the logo still there? Do they detect the manufacturer and slap it back?

Also, in theory, I should have been able to do a full system rescue from AOMEI but although the boot and the back up image were OK I could not see the laptop destination SSD. I will recover the AOMEI back up to a blank HD on another desktop to troubleshoot this further. Various possibilities come to mind for both problems.

Again, many thanks for all your help!

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/690596/acer-travelmate-win-11-hangs-on-acer-logo-on-restart

Make a Windows repair flash drive on another Windows11 PC and boot with that drive on your laptop (after you moved the USB drive to the top of the boot devices list in BIOS). Once in WindowsRE restore or RESET this PC without losing your files.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-error-code-0xc0000225-windows-10/