Stuck in a restart loop on an Aspire E 15 (E5-521-65B8)

boozinwalsh
boozinwalsh Member Posts: 2 New User
edited March 2023 in 2017 Archives

My boss gave me a laptop that was about to be thrown into the recycling bin. I'm trying to bring it back to life, but I'm running into a weird issue with it. Upon booting it up for the first time, it gave me a Windows 8 setup/loading screen. Then it crashed and after rebooting again it gives me this message:

 

"The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows, click “OK” to restart the computer, and then restart the installation."

 

So my first thought was that the hard drive is either toast or has a corrupted OS. My solution to this was to just throw another HDD in it so I put an older one in I had laying around that has Windows 7 on it. Same problem. It just restarts and gives me that message over and over.

 

Just to make sure it wasn't a coincidence, I borrowed an SSD that has Windows 7 Installed on it just to see what would happen. This time I was able to get to the Win 7 login screen but the system crashes after maybe eight seconds. I've tried four hard drives in total and they all seem to behave the same when connected to this laptop.

 

I assume that it's not the CPU or the RAM because it wouldn't boot at all if those were having problems, right? My other thought was that maybe it's overheating, but that seems unlikely because in my experience when a PC overheats, it shuts itself off instead of restarting. Also, when I attempted startup repairs the laptop was on for a long time without crashing. It's just when I try to get into Windows that things go awry. To tell the truth I don't have a ton of experience with laptop repair, mostly just PC's.

 

Any ideas? It's an Aspire E15 E5-521-65B8. This model: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314684

 

Thanks for your help!

 

 

Answers