Asus X401a (Win8) - will not boot past bios screen

[trinity343]

i have an Asus X401a notebook i'm working to repair and i've never seen this issue before and so far i've hit dead ends.

the owners of the notebook dropped it and since then this issue has been happening:

when you turn the notebook on it goes straight to the bios setup screen. no splash screen of any type.

the Bios recognizes that the harddrive is connected. i even took it apart to make sure the harddrive wasn't loose.

inside the bios i set it back to factory defaults and reboot. went straight back to Bios.

i've tried removing the battery and holding down the power button for a minute and then turning back on - no good.

i don't see an option in the bios for boot order so i can't try to boot from USB to see if i could even try to run a windows repair disk on it.

i'm a bit at a loss at the moment. anyone have any ideas?

 

[xcrossroadsx]

It boots directly to the BIOS screen because the unit does not see a valid boot path. Being dropped, this is almost definitely caused by the hard drive failing.

 

[trinity343]

It boots directly to the BIOS screen because the unit does not see a valid boot path. Being dropped, this is almost definitely caused by the hard drive failing.

i was afraid that would be the possible answer.

i'll have to find out if they have a install USB, if one came with the notebook. hopefully they do. it's not as convenient as it was back w/ xp and win7 when they put the windows product key on the bottom and any install disk/USB would suffice.

think there could be a possibility that a repair disk, if i can get it to boot from USB, may possible correct the booth path?

 

[Mikeybro]

i have the exact same problem

 

[trinity343]

i have the exact same problem

Mikeybro

i ended up sticking the hard drive into my desktops Dock and it ran a scandisk upon a reboot of the computer and it failed. couldn't even get it to boot back to windows from my desktop HDD until i removed the laptops drive from it. so for me it ended up being the hard drive failed. i'd trying taking the drive out of the laptop and testing it if you can