Aspire XC605-Win8-Randomly not booting intermittently, gets 'stuck' at the Acer logo at random time

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Answers

  • Wooster
    Wooster Member Posts: 16 Troubleshooter

    Yes, it's only the boot that fails (about 1% of the time), everything else works perfectly.

    The SSD is connected to the SATA cable - exactly as the original HDD was.

    But a few questions: Where is the 'ACER' splash screen stored?

    What makes the PC go from the splash screen to the boot?

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 35,835 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓

    The splash screen is stored as data in the BIOS and is displayed during POST, while the tests are executing. When POST is complete the system loads the EFI info from the drive, then uses that to decide which OS to start loading. As the OS starts it's load, the splash screen goes away and OS load information is shown instead. Since yours hangs with the drive activity light illuminated that leads me to believe the failure happens when the EFI file tries to load. That points to a drive error as the most common root cause, a motherboard failure much less often. POST has done some testing of the SATA interface by that point, so the motherboard is a lot less likely to be the root cause. The Aspire XC-605 models support three SATA devices and have no M.2 slot for drives, unlike newer models. Here's the board layout:

    image.png

    Note that the three SATA ports (8-10) have two different colors. #8 & 9 are SATA3, 6G/s ports, #10 is SATA 2, 3G/s. #10 should really only be used for an optical drive, but would work for a normal HDD or SSD, just slower than the other two ports. If it turns out that the issue is a hardware issue with the motherboard, then moving that drive to a different SATA port might 'fix' it.

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • Wooster
    Wooster Member Posts: 16 Troubleshooter

    Thanks for this. I still can't see it being the SSD as it would have to have the same fault as the old HDD. When I next have a bit of time I'll connect the SSD to one of the other SATA ports. The trouble is, it's so intermittent, I'll have to use it over and over for months to judge if it's been fixed. In all the time we've been having this 'conversation' it hasn't failed to boot once!

    So, I'll close this query down and thank you greatly for your assistance.

  • Wooster
    Wooster Member Posts: 16 Troubleshooter

    Hello again - just wanted to report back. I moved the SSD to the second SATA port and several month later…. it's booted correctly every time. Special thanks to billsey - your were absolutely correct in your diagnosis. Thank you. 👍️

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 35,835 Trailblazer

    Hopefully the issue with that bad SATA port doesn't migrate to more devices over time… :(

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • Wooster
    Wooster Member Posts: 16 Troubleshooter

    If the bad SATA port has a weak driver (or something) it's taken ten years for it to happen. With any luck, if the second SATA port is going to fail, it will take another ten years! (Then I could use the CD/DVD port….)

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