"NO BOOTABLE DEVICE" on Acer Aspire VN7

for the past year my Aspire laptop has been showing the "NO BOOTABLE DEVICE" message when I try to boot Windows.
I have been working around it by turning off the laptop and turning it back on. This approach used to work 1 in 3 tries, now it works about 1 in 10 tries.
Due to the declining functionality of my work-around, I thought I would fix it for good :-)

I wanted to try replacing the SSD that my C: is on.
Unfortunately, Acer didn't give a Windows 8.1 CD with my laptop. Additionally, I updated Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 for free.

After buying a replacement SSD, how do I re-install Windows 10 ?

Accepted answers

aphanic

I have good news for you (and anyone else in your situation), you don't need the original installation disk, nor the original key for Windows; I'll try to be brief, but I'd rather explain things so everybody stumbling upon this understands

There are several ways Windows licenses work, your computer came with Windows 8.1 right? If that's the case your license was an OEM one and the Windows 8.1 key was built into the firmware of your machine itself. There's no need for the thing anymore, if you were to install Windows 8.1 anew the installation would automatically detect the key and install the proper version (I'm guessing Home).

When you upgraded to Windows 10 for free, things changed for the better even (in my opinion). Now your license ought to be a digital one, stored in Microsoft's system. So unless you significantly changed the machine (think... motherboard for example, replacing or adding more RAM or a newer hard drive / SSD doesn't matter) after the Windows installation is done and you connect to the internet your computer would activate itself.

In Windows 10, you'd see something like this:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/jz/j7ug8xiizjxq.png

You can check it with your current setup if you can still access it, but really there's nothing you need to worry licensing wise

.

Now, reinstalling Windows without installation media provided. Acer has its own recovery mechanism for when you want to refresh so to speak the installation you have (I think it's called D2D), but since you've upgraded to a newer version of Windows I'd ditch it altogether. Whatever lays in the native recovery partition would be for Windows 8.1 (and that partition wouldn't even be there in the new SSD since it'd be empty).

So you have 2 options (probably more haha, I'm just going to name 2):

Say you can boot into your existing system...

- Download the official Windows 10 installation media utility: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
- Run it in your current system, it'll detect the version you're running and after agreeing to the licensing terms of your edition you'll be presented with the option to create installation media!

- The process is pretty straight forward, the next screens should guide you through it and the defaults ought to be the desired ones already.
- You'll need a USB stick of 8GB+ (I wonder why so much... huh..), or maybe a DVD, but after the process is done you're set: you'll have installation media for whatever Windows 10 version you chose.
- The next step would be to back up all the data you want off of your current disk if you haven't done already, power off the machine, replace the disk and boot off of the installation media you just created.
- No need to partition the new disk or anything, simply select it during the installation and the program will take care of it.
Say you can't even boot once anymore...

- Well... you could use a different machine to follow the same process I described above ^^, the end result ought to be valid for your system as well (it's likely going to be a 64-bit Windows 10 installation media anyway...).
- Or you could create the installation media on your own using 3rd party tools. Not as cut and dried as using the official thing, but far from complicated. For example, the Windows image (ISO) file to create an installation media could be downloaded using Heidoc's Windows ISO downloader tool, and it could be copied to a USB stick using Rufus for example, another little utility.
- Both are easy to use, but if you wanted more precise instructions let me know, I could write you a tutorial or step by step guide.

And that's it! Questions you may have:

What about drivers? Would I need to download anything beforehand?

Not likely, unless when you go to install Windows the drive is not visible (but it appears in the BIOS as usual). Windows 10 has inbox drivers for most storage controllers, maybe you'd need Intel's RST (sometimes known as F6 drivers) if that's the case.

The rest should be handled by Windows itself, either on its own or when you check for updates through Windows Update. You can go out of the reservation and install drivers manually (read, newer ones, directly off of the manufacturer like NVIDIA), but... you may need to disable driver updates through Windows Update, it tends to stick to whatever is tested even if it's not the newest release and could override your choices.

Now that I think of it, you may need the driver for the WiFi or Ethernet card as well in case there's no default driver for them in Windows 10, otherwise you'd end up not being able to connect to the Internet at all after the installation.

You know what, before going through the installation stop by the support page for your laptop and download the storage drivers, the WiFi /Ethernet ones and put them in the USB stick as well just in case. During the installation if the setup program can't find the disk you could load the appropriate driver already and save yourself some time for example .
And Acer applications?

Huh... there may be some you find useful or down right necessary, but in the support page for your laptop you should be able to download them. Like, their Quick Access service for example.

And final note, if you don't care for Microsoft accounts and you'd rather have a local user instead make sure you don't connect to the Internet during setup when asked, otherwise it could get tricky haha.

All comments

_albie_

NOTE: Acer neither supplied a Windows 8.1 license sticker on the underside of the laptop, nor on the cardboard box

aphanic

I have good news for you (and anyone else in your situation), you don't need the original installation disk, nor the original key for Windows; I'll try to be brief, but I'd rather explain things so everybody stumbling upon this understands

There are several ways Windows licenses work, your computer came with Windows 8.1 right? If that's the case your license was an OEM one and the Windows 8.1 key was built into the firmware of your machine itself. There's no need for the thing anymore, if you were to install Windows 8.1 anew the installation would automatically detect the key and install the proper version (I'm guessing Home).

When you upgraded to Windows 10 for free, things changed for the better even (in my opinion). Now your license ought to be a digital one, stored in Microsoft's system. So unless you significantly changed the machine (think... motherboard for example, replacing or adding more RAM or a newer hard drive / SSD doesn't matter) after the Windows installation is done and you connect to the internet your computer would activate itself.

In Windows 10, you'd see something like this:

You can check it with your current setup if you can still access it, but really there's nothing you need to worry licensing wise

.

Now, reinstalling Windows without installation media provided. Acer has its own recovery mechanism for when you want to refresh so to speak the installation you have (I think it's called D2D), but since you've upgraded to a newer version of Windows I'd ditch it altogether. Whatever lays in the native recovery partition would be for Windows 8.1 (and that partition wouldn't even be there in the new SSD since it'd be empty).

So you have 2 options (probably more haha, I'm just going to name 2):

Say you can boot into your existing system...

- Download the official Windows 10 installation media utility: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
- Run it in your current system, it'll detect the version you're running and after agreeing to the licensing terms of your edition you'll be presented with the option to create installation media!

- The process is pretty straight forward, the next screens should guide you through it and the defaults ought to be the desired ones already.
- You'll need a USB stick of 8GB+ (I wonder why so much... huh..), or maybe a DVD, but after the process is done you're set: you'll have installation media for whatever Windows 10 version you chose.
- The next step would be to back up all the data you want off of your current disk if you haven't done already, power off the machine, replace the disk and boot off of the installation media you just created.
- No need to partition the new disk or anything, simply select it during the installation and the program will take care of it.
Say you can't even boot once anymore...

- Well... you could use a different machine to follow the same process I described above ^^, the end result ought to be valid for your system as well (it's likely going to be a 64-bit Windows 10 installation media anyway...).
- Or you could create the installation media on your own using 3rd party tools. Not as cut and dried as using the official thing, but far from complicated. For example, the Windows image (ISO) file to create an installation media could be downloaded using Heidoc's Windows ISO downloader tool, and it could be copied to a USB stick using Rufus for example, another little utility.
- Both are easy to use, but if you wanted more precise instructions let me know, I could write you a tutorial or step by step guide.

And that's it! Questions you may have:

What about drivers? Would I need to download anything beforehand?

Not likely, unless when you go to install Windows the drive is not visible (but it appears in the BIOS as usual). Windows 10 has inbox drivers for most storage controllers, maybe you'd need Intel's RST (sometimes known as F6 drivers) if that's the case.

The rest should be handled by Windows itself, either on its own or when you check for updates through Windows Update. You can go out of the reservation and install drivers manually (read, newer ones, directly off of the manufacturer like NVIDIA), but... you may need to disable driver updates through Windows Update, it tends to stick to whatever is tested even if it's not the newest release and could override your choices.

Now that I think of it, you may need the driver for the WiFi or Ethernet card as well in case there's no default driver for them in Windows 10, otherwise you'd end up not being able to connect to the Internet at all after the installation.

You know what, before going through the installation stop by the support page for your laptop and download the storage drivers, the WiFi /Ethernet ones and put them in the USB stick as well just in case. During the installation if the setup program can't find the disk you could load the appropriate driver already and save yourself some time for example .
And Acer applications?

Huh... there may be some you find useful or down right necessary, but in the support page for your laptop you should be able to download them. Like, their Quick Access service for example.

And final note, if you don't care for Microsoft accounts and you'd rather have a local user instead make sure you don't connect to the Internet during setup when asked, otherwise it could get tricky haha.

_albie_

NOTE: it turned out that resetting Windows fixed the "NO BOOTABLE DEVICE" error! Also, my touchpad works again. AMAZING!!
Thank you aphanic for such a detailed write-up. Thankfully I didn't need to reinstall from DVD

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