Can anyone pls help me? I am using Acer One 10 s1003 and this happens (see pic). Pls help me resolve this issue so I can use my tablet again. Thanks

vojtechh said:

Hello, after many long nights I have finally found the solution.

First, let me say that this computer (if you can even call it that) is terrible. I have never worked with anything worse than this. Now onto the guide:

Windows won't boot from the USB installation media at all, so you can't actually install windows on the thing. You will have to copy the installation over. For that we will use some linux magic and VirtualBox. So go ahead and download VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) on a different computer. Then you have to obtain the 32 bit Windows ISO (https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/software-download/windows10ISO).

Fire up VirtualBox and create a new Virtual Machine. The hard drive size should be about 28 GB. Then go to the settings of your VM and turn on EFI (System > Motherboard > Extended Features > Enable EFI). Then go ahead and boot your VM, select the ISO you've downloaded and proceed. Install Windows as you normally would but do not continue past the setup screen after reboot (the one where you pick your area). Press Shift+F10, cmd should pop up. Type in <b>shutdown /s /t 0</b>. The VM should shutdown.

After that go to the installation folder of VirtualBox (C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\) and open cmd there. Type in <b>VBoxManage.exe clonehd --format RAW source.vdi Windows.img</b> where source.vdi is the virtual disk you've created when creating the VM and Windows.img is the output file that is going to be created (You can put it on the desktop so you don't have to open CMD as an Administrator). Once that is done, download Rufus (https://rufus.ie/), open it up and press the SELECT button. Select the Windows.img you have just exported using VBoxManage. Then select a USB drive (min. 32GB) you will use (this will wipe it and you will lose all your data, so backup). Get a coffee since this is going to take a while.

Meanwhile rufus is burning the img onto the USB drive, download PuppyLinux (http://puppylinux.com/index.html#download > 32bit Ubuntu Bionic). Find another usb drive (this time it can be a small one, even 1 GB should work) and wait for the Rufus to finish the previous work. Don't close it yet, since we need it to burn puppy linux. Once again select it using the SELECT button and choose your smaller USB drive. It is important to select MBR as the partition scheme, since otherwise it won't boot. Once that is burned we are ready to boot it from the laptop/tablet.

Plug both drives to your acer tablet (you need an USB OTG cabel for this) and turn it on while pressing the ESC key. A configuration screen should show up. Go to Boot From File and then find the USB drive with puppy linux. Boot from the 32bit .efi file. Click enter on all the Grub screens and you should get to the desktop. Open terminal and type in lsblk a list of storage media should show up. Then type in dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512 status=progress  make sure to replace the X with a letter of the 32 gig USB drive from lsblk (mmcblk0 is the internal storage of the laptop, if that has a different name you have to change it according to the output from lsblk). Press enter and wait. Once this command completes you have successfully installed Windows on this terrible computer!

Reboot and finish the windows setup. After that press the Windows Key+R and type in diskmgmt.msc, right click on the C: partition and extend it to the maximum size.

The only thing left is to install all the drivers. Since there is no Wifi yet, you will have to copy them over. Luckily Acer has made an automatic installation of all the drivers (https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/6822?b=1 > Platform Drivers Installer). Once that is on the tablet, open cmd as root and cd to the Scripts folder of this driver package. Run the install file and wait for it to finish. Now all the drivers should be installed. Congrats.

Hi everyone, I have some questions about this installation method, I'm new in this world of troubleshooting things. Because It seems that I have the same problem that opened this thread, I tried to install ubuntu 20.04 on my acer one 10 s1003 (N16H1) but ubuntu installer just crashed and nuked the internal storage of the device, all data was gone including drivers and the hidden recovery partition (without drivers harware doesn't work, obviously). In this moment I'm trying to install wifi drivers directly on lubuntu 20.04.2 (I actually could install this distro on the computer in fact I already asked in ask lubuntu how to do it (sort of haha): https://askubuntu.com/questions/1351858/can-i-install-windows-drivers-on-a-acer-one-10-s1003-2gb-model-that-runs-lubuntu?noredirect=1#comment2311581_1351858), If I cannot install those ones on lubuntu, I shall try to reinstall windows 10 on the device for installing the drivers. I have two questions: First, which boot drive has GPT format? I think is window's boot drive because puppy linuxe's drive has to be formatted as MBR, I'm not sure. Second. After I reinstalled windows and the platform devices and all factory drivers, Can I reinstall a linux distro (like fedora or even lubuntu) and keep those drivers on the computer? Because I read that fedora is recommended for this device due to its tochscreen support (according this reddit post: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1351858/can-i-install-windows-drivers-on-a-acer-one-10-s1003-2gb-model-that-runs-lubuntu?noredirect=1#comment2311581_1351858) or lubuntu because is very light and not demanding for this device. I know that sometimes those drivers causes problems on those distros but fortunately there's scripts that fixes the majority of those problems.

I apologise for my english, the extention of this comment. And thanks for your comments, drink water, take care of yourself. 

Well thanks, I will consider installing debian. But In my case If I manage to install windows on this tablet and installing the drivers, I won't be able to keep those drivers, will I?