Reboot and select proper boot devide

[tk175672]

I acquired a windows 8 computer motherboard and power supply a month or so ago and just got around to firing it up.

This: http://www.findlaptopdriver.com/iibtdl-borg/

Is the only info on the motherboard i could find.

Attempt one: SATA hard drive with windows vista: error mentioned in title.
160gb seagate

Attempt two: SATA hard drive with windows 7: Same
1TB seagate

Attempt three: Sata cd drive with windows 10 preview: same (also tried ubuntu)

Attempt 4 USB 16gb thumb drive: same

every time i used a hard drive it shows up in bios but none of the attempts anything showed up in boot order (select what hard drive boots first ect)


Specs: quad core 2.0ghz with 2gb ddr3. USB keyboard VGA output. nothing else plugged in other that boot-able devices. tried without keyboard installed.

as a note: Had to reset cmos to get it to boot to bios at all.

 

[Reyaz123]

You can try going into your bios and settings your sata devices to AHCI mode

 

[tk175672]

You can try going into your bios and settings your sata devices to AHCI mode

Yep tried it and native IDE. no change. and that wouldn't explain why USB won't work.

 

[Reyaz123]

You can try going into your bios and settings your sata devices to AHCI mode

Yep tried it and native IDE. no change. and that wouldn't explain why USB won't work.

There should be a usb legacy support option in your bios, enable that
If you see secure boot and/or fast boot, disable it
Or launch csm, enable that

 

[tk175672]

You can try going into your bios and settings your sata devices to AHCI mode

Yep tried it and native IDE. no change. and that wouldn't explain why USB won't work.

There should be a usb legacy support option in your bios, enable that
If you see secure boot and/or fast boot, disable it
Or launch csm, enable that

Disabled secure boot. now i get a black screen on boot that tells me what is loaded.
(disabled quiet boot)
No fast boot setting. there is a D2D recovery that is enabled.

Only relevant thing in boot loading is "Detecting ata/atapi devices" "sata porto (name of sata hard drive i have in right now)"

Also the bios says "Axpire XC-603d" if that helps at all. tried google-ing this error before posting but it seems to be caused by a number of issues.

Edit: Been reading. it appears that they made it hard to get any OS to boot on this bios other than the one it came with. even if secure boot is turned off.

Edit two: after more reading it seems that the only way to be able to boot other things is to upgrade/downgrade bios to enable legacy support. I have never upgraded/downgraded a bios before so i would need a good tutorial to do so.
This: http://www.ripsawgroup.com/acer-aspire-xc-603-windows-7-bios-upgrade-howto/ seems to be the best one i have found yet. would it work?

my bios version is:3/27/2014

 

[tk175672]

You can try going into your bios and settings your sata devices to AHCI mode

Yep tried it and native IDE. no change. and that wouldn't explain why USB won't work.

There should be a usb legacy support option in your bios, enable that
If you see secure boot and/or fast boot, disable it
Or launch csm, enable that

Well i can't boot anything without the CSM option. i can't update bios without booting something. but i can't boot anything without being able to change CSM. any ideas on how to break a loop?any way to use control-c lol.

 

[Reyaz123]

Lol, my own laptop cannot boot without CSM as well....

The only idea I have for you is if you see usb controller settings, experiement with different settings and hopefully it will work

 

[tk175672]

Lol, my own laptop cannot boot without CSM as well....

The only idea I have for you is if you see usb controller settings, experiement with different settings and hopefully it will work

Tried that already. just got off with acer support. stumped 3 IT professionals and a supervisor.

the basic answer is "You need to buy/have a computer professional install a windows 8 OS to upgrade the bios to be able to boot anything else" i can't afford windows 8 and i have had very bad experiences with computer repairmen. stolen ram replaced with lower clock speed. incompetence. CMOS battery wedged in header pins killing stuff... formatting then replacing a hard drive making a friend buy a new OS just to get rid of an adware virus.

 

[Reyaz123]

Woah man, your luck isn't very good. Never heard of things being that bad from computer repairmen..

Might as well upgrade your motherboard and hope it has the settings to boot from your device. Since you already have devices that have the installation files for windows.

Probably not worth the headache.

 

[tk175672]

Woah man, your luck isn't very good. Never heard of things being that bad from computer repairmen..

Might as well upgrade your motherboard and hope it has the settings to boot from your device. Since you already have devices that have the installation files for windows.

Probably not worth the headache.

I have built three computers in the last week and repaired 13 or so in the last year. i know a tad bit about computers but the answer i see is that i need a copy of windows 8. I will ask around and see if any of my friends have a copy i can borrow to upgrade the bios.

 

[Reyaz123]

Yep, you should try to get a hold of a CD (make sure its working of course). Otherwise I would suspect a problem with the motherboard/connectors.

 

[tk175672]

Yep, you should try to get a hold of a CD (make sure its working of course). Otherwise I would suspect a problem with the motherboard/connectors.

Well the top guy i talked to at acer said it sounds like nothing is wrong with the motherboard. he said the only things to do are: Install windows 8 or take it to a computer repairman and have them use 3rd party tools to update the bios.

 

[tk175672]

*facepalm* i tried the 32 bit version of ubuntu (64 doesn't work either) but on a whim i tried the beta build. it works! i can boot!

Next problem:
Acer doesn't give bios installers for linux. Just tried booting the 90 day trial for windows 8. doesn't detect it as bootable. PC doesn't have a floppy or cd drive so i can only install the bios from inside ubuntu (will not boot ANYTHING but ubuntu. even tried dos) any ideas on how to do so?

 

[Reyaz123]

Updating the BIOS, many things can go wrong. If your computer shuts off during the update, it will prevent your system from even turning on.

You have to go to your computer company's official driver page
Type in your computer model number in the site (should be somewhere)
The bios utilities and installers should be located there

You may need to watch videos on how to update the bios, because if you make one mistake, it can't be good..

 

[tk175672]

I am well aware of the dangers of updating the bios. I have done it before. the problem is that i have never done it in linux and acer doesn't supply linux driver update files. i cannot boot any other OS so i am not sure how to update it. so until them i am stuck with ubuntu. (not so bad other than i was going to sell it to a friend to play games on so i needs to be able to run windows)

Updating the BIOS, many things can go wrong. If your computer shuts off during the update, it will prevent your system from even turning on.

You have to go to your computer company's official driver page
Type in your computer model number in the site (should be somewhere)
The bios utilities and installers should be located there

You may need to watch videos on how to update the bios, because if you make one mistake, it can't be good..

 

[Reyaz123]

I believe you can put your windows 8 setup disk in while logged into Linux and install to a partition from there. Maybe it'll help you

 

[tk175672]

I believe you can put your windows 8 setup disk in while logged into Linux and install to a partition from there. Maybe it'll help you

It still won't boot that partition. will it? tonight i am going to download windows 8.1 and try it (i tried the evaluation edition of 8.0) i think the bios still has the key for windows 8 in it. and if it even tries to boot it (even if i don't have the key) it may be worth it getting an old copy of windows 8 (now that 10 is almost out) to get this running.

 

[Reyaz123]

8.1 and 8 are different versions of Windows. It's worth a shot to try it until you find the correct version (the product key will automatically fill in during the setup if the version is correct)

 

[tk175672]

8.1 and 8 are different versions of Windows. It's worth a shot to try it until you find the correct version (the product key will automatically fill in during the setup if the version is correct)

Tried both. doesn't detect either as bootable. but why does it boot ubuntu yet can't boot anything else?

 

[Reyaz123]

The volumes or partitions have to be formatted as NTFS for it to boot into windows. For Ubuntu it is fat32

But as I said earlier, the way I explained it was probably not clear.
Rephrased: Put in the windows setup disk while booted up and logged into Ubuntu
See if the setup is able to run and check if it could install to a new partition on your hard drive

 

[tk175672]

The volumes or partitions have to be formatted as NTFS for it to boot into windows. For Ubuntu it is fat32

But as I said earlier, the way I explained it was probably not clear.
Rephrased: Put in the windows setup disk while booted up and logged into Ubuntu
See if the setup is able to run and check if it could install to a new partition on your hard drive

I will try it later. will have to steal my only sata dvd drive from my nice windows 7 to do it. how would i run it? wouldn't it be an .exe format? how would that run in ubuntu without wine virtualbox ect. would also need to steal a sata cable to run the hard drive.

 

[Reyaz123]

You could even create a windows setup usb using a program called rufus and perform the above steps as long as you have the windows setup ISO file somewhere on your hard drive while logged into Ubuntu

Edit: In other words, run the windows setup file from a USB and see if you could install to a partition on your hard drive from there

 

[tk175672]

You could even create a windows setup usb using a program called rufus and perform the above steps as long as you have the windows setup ISO file somewhere on your hard drive while logged into Ubuntu

Edit: In other words, run the windows setup file from a USB and see if you could install to a partition on your hard drive from there

i tried a windows usb made with rufus on my other win 7. would being in ubuntu make any change?

I can try that.

 

[Reyaz123]

You could even create a windows setup usb using a program called rufus and perform the above steps as long as you have the windows setup ISO file somewhere on your hard drive while logged into Ubuntu

Edit: In other words, run the windows setup file from a USB and see if you could install to a partition on your hard drive from there

i tried a windows usb made with rufus on my other win 7. would being in ubuntu make any change?

I can try that.

It is very possible to run the setup file from that usb. Being in Ubuntu shouldn't change how to run that setup file

 

[Reyaz123]

You could even create a windows setup usb using a program called rufus and perform the above steps as long as you have the windows setup ISO file somewhere on your hard drive while logged into Ubuntu

Edit: In other words, run the windows setup file from a USB and see if you could install to a partition on your hard drive from there

i tried a windows usb made with rufus on my other win 7. would being in ubuntu make any change?

I can try that.

It is very possible to run the setup file from that usb. Being in Ubuntu shouldn't change how to run that setup file