Acer Laptop will not boot from from disc or USB

[andokuky]

My father-in-law has an Acer E1-510P-2671 that he bought a few months ago. He has lost the Windows disc that came with it, assuming it even had one. He bought it at Walmart, preinstalled with Windows 8.

He forgot his password. He did not use a Microsoft account to make the account, so he cannot recover it that way. He again, has no disc, and never made a password reset disk on this machine.

I may be wrong but I believe my only options are to try and reset it with a program such as HiRens, or completely reinstall Windows 8 on his machine. I opted for HiRens. I made a bootable thumb drive with the program on it, his laptop boots to Windows 8 anyway. I made a bootable CD with it, the laptop boots to Windows 8 anyway.

I have changed the BIOS settings correctly. I have also enabled the F12 boot menu, but the only options I am given are the Windows Boot Manager, and a network boot if I have it enabled in BIOS. Nothing else ever shows up.

I have used Google and found some other people complaining of the same thing, but nothing with this exact model of laptop. Is this a common Acer thing? Seems they are greatly limiting what you can boot from, and I don't understand why.

So basically I want to be able to boot from a HiRens disc I made but cannot. I have the BIOS set correctly AFAIK, but the machine seems locked into booting into Windows 8.

 

[andokuky]

The laptop is barely 3 months old, maybe even less than 2 months.

I know the USB drive works, I use it on my own computers. I know his disc drive works, he watches movies on his laptop all the time.

I have set an admin pass in the BIOS and this allowed me to go in and disable secure booting. But I still cannot actually change the boot process. It boots to Windows if I do nothing, and the only thing that shows on the boot menu is Windows Boot Manager. I have read this is because of UEFI and it needs to be switched to Legacy Boot or something, but I don't get that option.

 

[andokuky]

I think I made this thread wrong and should have not made it an answer thread or whatever. Is that right?

Anyway, I cannot log into the laptop. I can get to the Boot Menu screen and see it on the screen. The problem is it only has Windows Boot Manager as an option, and network boot options if I have network boot enabled. I need to be able to boot from the CD drive, but it is not working. I have disabled SecureBoot. I have talked to Acer, the level one tech support said that disabling UEFI or whatever as the boot method should work, so he transferred me to a level two support person, who then told me not all models can disable UEFI but for a fee they could repair it.

Here is the BIOS:

Here is the Boot Menu:

Sorry for the big pictures.

 

[andokuky]

Hi,

What second level tech support said is correct.. All laptop don't have that feature. So i think you need to pay for it by giving it to Acer Center... No other go.. 🙁

Does that seem right? Just seems bizarre that the laptop would come without the ability to boot from a disc or thumb drive.

 

[kingdomfire]

Hi,

What second level tech support said is correct.. All laptop don't have that feature. So i think you need to pay for it by giving it to Acer Center... No other go.. 🙁

Does that seem right? Just seems bizarre that the laptop would come without the ability to boot from a disc or thumb drive.

I know this thread is a few months old, but incase anyone else is looking for an answer...


If it had Windows 8 on it previously, go into the bios, change the boot type to legacy and it should all start working.

Tom