Acer Nitro 5 "AN515-57-74TT" does not recognize bootable devices

Hi!
I've run into a rather enigmatic issue with my Acer Nitro computer, and I was wondering if anyone had experienced anything similar. My setup has two M.2 hard drives and two operating systems - Windows 11 and Linux Mint. The other day I was going to switch from my Linux OS into Windows, so I rebooted the computer and expected to enter into the GRUB menu (as usual) where I could switch my boot device to the Windows one. Instead, I was greeted with a "no bootable device" screen. So, I checked the BIOS, and sure enough, neither of the bootable drives were detected.
What strikes me as strange about this is that *neither* device is recognized, which means that it's very unlikely to be a hardware problem with one of the drives - at least one should still work, in theory.
Here are some steps I've taken in my attempts to alleviate the issue:

Disable Secure Boot and TPM — no effect
Set boot mode to "Legacy" — Not possible, possibly due to a BIOS update (?), though I do not remember ever manually updating the BIOS.
Start from a bootable Linux Mint hard drive (this was recognized in BIOS and worked!) and run boot repair — Mostly worked, but ended with a "Locked NVRAM" message, which seems somewhat enigmatic itself, but led me to the next few steps I took; I'm fairly certain that I did not touch the Windows drive with boot repair. (Note: I have not tried the "risky" `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nvram` method, and would prefer to avoid it.)
Reset the CMOS — I held down the power button (which I was not sure was correct, but the LEDs turned off so it did something), then tried unplugging the battery (then plugged back in and retried boot), then unplugged the battery and CMOS / RTC battery (retried), then finally unplugged every peripheral I saw on the motherboard, left it for 6 hours, plugged in and retried again - to no avail.

The computer is only a little over a year old, so it's a shame that it ran into on issue like this so soon… But hopefully this has been solved in the past by someone, it just does not appear that the solution is on the internet yet.
Thanks!

Accepted answers

aragorn99

egydiocoelho, yes, I tried this a couple of times.

So, I ended up "solving" this problem by getting a new hard drive and cloning the old fs over from my Linux Mint drive onto the new one. During the process I chose to reinstall the bootloader over the old one, which, although it wasn't working using "boot repair," seemed to work fine from clonezilla. I booted it up and everything seemed to work just fine, so I'm going to say that's repaired enough for me. Windows I don't particularly need right now, but if I did I'm sure I could find a way to reinstall it.
Thank you all for your help!

All comments

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/683778/acer-nitro-5-an515-57-74tt-does-not-recognize-bootable-devices

"Disable Secure Boot and TPM —" Don’t disable these they are a must to start Windows11, disable Fast Boot.

"Set boot mode to "Legacy" — Not possible, possibly due to a BIOS update (?)," You have UEFI firmware, GPT, that does not have Legacy.

Resetting your BIOS won’t help much as the boot manager is probably missing or corrupted, read this how to fix that:

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/dual-boot-not-working-both-os-useable-no-boot-manager.686/page-2

I recommend to use WindowsRE Recovery USB flash drive that you made with Windows11 to boot with or borrow one that has the same Windows version.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/683778/acer-nitro-5-an515-57-74tt-does-not-recognize-bootable-devices

Make sure that you have done the installation of the windows and linux properly, and follow this steps Dual Boot Windows 10 and Linux Ubuntu on Separate Hard Drives as you must have installed both of these OSs wrongly onto your laptop, especially not disabling "secure boot" and "Intel Rapid Start" (if equipped) in bios.

aragorn99

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1196146#Comment_1196146

Hi StevenGen! My installations of both Windows and Linux have been working great for over a year, they just decided to stop working "randomly" the other day. I can't recall having made any major, bootloader-affecting changes recently. Thanks for the link though - I'll look into the Intel Rapid Start thing next time I reboot.

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1196138#Comment_1196138

Hi Puraw, thanks for the quick response. Yeah, I didn't particularly have high hopes for disabling Secure Boot / TPM by the time I tried that; I reset those settings to default immediately after trying them. I'll look into making a Windows recovery drive tomorrow, when I have access to another Windows computer to make it on. I don't suspect you're wrong, but I am slightly skeptical of this due to the fact that Windows and Linux both disappeared from the perspective of the BIOS at the same time - It makes it seem like the issue is with the firmware actually recognizing the bootloaders, rather than a problem with the hard drives themselves. But of course I can't rule it out until I've tried it! I'll do that ASAP tomorrow.

Two more pieces of info for anyone catching up on this thread:

I forgot to mention that I have also tried swapping the two hard drives as well as the RAM cards - increasingly "shrugging and crossing my fingers," I know, but such things have solved problems in the past, so I figured they were worth a shot.
Here's a picture of the BIOS "BOOT" screen showing that NO devices are recognized - along with the fact of both OS's disappearing at once, this is evidence that the problem isn't just in the bootloader.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1196148#Comment_1196148

aragorn99, one thing is for sure that whenever you get a "no bootable device" screen it just doesn’t come up for nothing, even if you have used this dual boot OS setup for 1 years or forever! These sorts of errors come up because your M.2 SSD drives are faulty or damaged or you have critical software and file system issues in both OS systems. To find out the file system issues in windows, take the Linux M.2 SSD out, and get into Safe Mode, press F4 when starting the computer (on Windows) or reboot your machine holding down either Shift key on the keyboard. For Linux, I’ve got no idea how to troubleshoot that, so look it up and find out. Not having either M.2 drives recognised in bios is a critical error that could be your drives. As your M.2 SSD drives are damaged, S.M.A.R.T. Failures, Bad Blocks, File Cannot Be Written Or Read or frequent crashes like you are having, are known to be one of the surest symptoms that your SSDs are failing.

aragorn99

Thanks for the advice StevenGen - It strikes me as strange that both my hard drives would fail at once, but I hadn't used Windows for a while so I guess that drive may have failed some time ago and I just didn't notice until the LInux one also failed. I've ordered up a new 2TB hard drive - I've been thinking about upgrading for awhile anyway - so if all else fails I'll just reinstall Linux on there and maybe make a separate partition for Windows, restore my backed up files, etc.
As for getting Windows back, I'll be on my way to work soon and I'll report back on how that went after the workday - in about 10 hours. Thanks!

Commodore_1995#

Can you send a picture of the bios info tab? It is interesting to check if the disks are being recognized by the bios.

aragorn99

Ah, thanks for pointing that out, egydiocoelho, I see now that the hard drives are enumerated, even if the bootloaders are not recognized. So perhaps they did both manage to get corrupted somehow…

I looked in to that "Intel Rapid Start" thing, but it looks like that's not an option on my device. Thanks for the suggestion, though, StevenGen.

Puraw, I'm in the process of creating a Windows Recovery Drive right now, but it's taking quite a long time to do so (the Windows PC I have access to is quite slow). I'll post another update when I'm done with that.

aragorn99

Here are the results from the recovery drive:

After looking through "Advanced Options" I found this and tried:

Looks to me like I've about exhausted my options — but if anyone thinks of anything else, let me know and I can give it a shot.

aragorn99

At this point I think I may just wait for my new hard drive to come on Monday, and restore my files from the old hard drives as far as possible. I'll install a fresh new Linux install and use the recovery drive to install Windows if possible… Not ideal, but good enough.

Commodore_1995#

Have you tried disconnecting the lithium battery and then disconnecting the two ssds?

aragorn99

egydiocoelho, yes, I tried this a couple of times.

So, I ended up "solving" this problem by getting a new hard drive and cloning the old fs over from my Linux Mint drive onto the new one. During the process I chose to reinstall the bootloader over the old one, which, although it wasn't working using "boot repair," seemed to work fine from clonezilla. I booted it up and everything seemed to work just fine, so I'm going to say that's repaired enough for me. Windows I don't particularly need right now, but if I did I'm sure I could find a way to reinstall it.
Thank you all for your help!

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