This desktop is stuck on the Acer logo when booting

KarlKarrlander

Honorable
May 7, 2015
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10,640
Hey!

A friend of mine asked if I could take a look at her Acer desktop running Windows 8.1 since it was running slow and freezing from time to time, so I did. And what everything amounted to was that I did a factory reset. Everything went smoothly and it booted up fine, with the computer being completely clean and actually working better than before, until I turned it off and was about to turn it on again.

When I pressed the power button it turned on fine but then got stuck on the boot screen with the Acer logo in the background and the spinning circle in the center. I gave it time, about an hour, and it was the same. So I switched it off by holding the power button and then turned it on again. Now it said that it was preparing to repair the computer and then got stuck on the diagnostics text, with the circle spinning for all eternity.

So, here's what I've done to try and fix this issue:
- I've pressed F8 before the boot and tried to enter Safe mode, which did not work.
- I've entered BIOS and tried to boot from another device, it only recognizes Windows Boot Manager and the CD/DVD drive.
- I've inserted a USB drive with a Windows 10 install (though I've lost the product key) and booted from that drive in order to access any kind of repair option.
- When booting from the USB I tried to start in Safe mode, restore the system, troubleshoot it, nothing worked. Same problem..
- I tried to reinstall Windows with another drive I had with Windows 10 for which I actually had the key left. The computer did not even recognize the drive at all in the boot options.

What more can I do? Here's a few thoughts I had for solving it:

- Creating a recovery media from another computer running Windows 8.1.
- Replacing the HDD (should I boot from a drive with an existing Windows version or a completely clean one?)

Would really appreciate some help on this!

Thanks 😉
 
Solution
Reset the BIOS to defaults. Remove anything USB connected or new to the PC (e.g. did the Acer come with AMD graphics and get replaced with NVIDIA?). Make sure you are *not* network connected. Do the factory reset again to get a fresh copy of win8.1. Do a few reboots. Download any ACER driver updates on a different computer and load to the ACER via USB. Do a few reboots. Then network connect and do windows update.

If the PC can't get through windows update or the reboot process then download a bootable diagnostic and see if there is a hardware problem. But is sounds like the acer factory reset glitched.

Good Luck.
Reset the BIOS to defaults. Remove anything USB connected or new to the PC (e.g. did the Acer come with AMD graphics and get replaced with NVIDIA?). Make sure you are *not* network connected. Do the factory reset again to get a fresh copy of win8.1. Do a few reboots. Download any ACER driver updates on a different computer and load to the ACER via USB. Do a few reboots. Then network connect and do windows update.

If the PC can't get through windows update or the reboot process then download a bootable diagnostic and see if there is a hardware problem. But is sounds like the acer factory reset glitched.

Good Luck.
 
Solution