Brand new Acer laptop won't boot

Irish Guitarist

Last week I bought an Acer Aspire 5742Z with Windows 7 installed. It had been working fine until today.

Earlier today I downloaded a program called Truecrypt which lets you password protect a hard drive or external device. I used the program to password protect a USB flash drive. However once I had encrypted the flash drive I removed it from the port without exiting Truecrypt. This made the flash drive undetectable by Windows and Truecrypt could not read it either. I spent about half an hour trying to restore the flash drive to a workable state by opening Truecrypt and entering my password numerous times but it didn't work. Windows also couldn't format the drive.

While I was doing all this I got a Windows message saying that there were hard disk problems and I should back up Windows. I stupidly ignored this thinking that what it meant was that there were problems with the flash drive.

However when I restarted the laptop Windows wouldn't boot and I got this error message:

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.
No bootable device -- insert boot disc and press any key.

The Windows disc did not come with my laptop so I tried using the backup DVDs (for restoring to factory settings) that I burned using the NTI Backup program included with the laptop. However when the discs had finished restoring Windows my laptop rebooted and I got the same message about there being no bootable device. I tried these backup DVDs once again and got the same message, but this time there was also a beeping noise.

I have no idea if what I said about using the Truecrypt program is relevant or if this is a hard disk issue. I suspect it is though because when I press F2 and go to setup and information under 'HDD model name' it says 'none'. And after HDD serial name it's just blank.

I know that was all long winded but I'm not particularly computer literate and I have no idea what information is relevant and what isn't.

yoyo

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Last week I bought an Acer Aspire 5742Z with Windows 7 installed. It had been working fine until today.

Earlier today I downloaded a program called Truecrypt which lets you password protect a hard drive or external device. I used the program to password protect a USB flash drive. However once I had encrypted the flash drive I removed it from the port without exiting Truecrypt. This made the flash drive undetectable by Windows and Truecrypt could not read it either. I spent about half an hour trying to restore the flash drive to a workable state by opening Truecrypt and entering my password numerous times but it didn't work. Windows also couldn't format the drive.

While I was doing all this I got a Windows message saying that there were hard disk problems and I should back up Windows. I stupidly ignored this thinking that what it meant was that there were problems with the flash drive.

However when I restarted the laptop Windows wouldn't boot and I got this error message:


The Windows disc did not come with my laptop so I tried using the backup DVDs (for restoring to factory settings) that I burned using the NTI Backup program included with the laptop. However when the discs had finished restoring Windows my laptop rebooted and I got the same message about there being no bootable device. I tried these backup DVDs once again and got the same message, but this time there was also a beeping noise.

I have no idea if what I said about using the Truecrypt program is relevant or if this is a hard disk issue. I suspect it is though because when I press F2 and go to setup and information under 'HDD model name' it says 'none'. And after HDD serial name it's just blank.

I know that was all long winded but I'm not particularly computer literate and I have no idea what information is relevant and what isn't.

You need to choose the option to boot from the CD/DVD drive to boot off the Windows disc. Having said that it looks as though your laptop isn't picking up any hard disk, if the bios is reporting no bootable device found, it could be due to a corrupt install but usually that means not finding any boot source like HD. Most laptops when you hit F12 at startup open a "boot menu" where you can choose the dvd drive, if not look in the bios for boot priority settings, setting CD/DVD Rom drive to be first (top priority).
Edit: The fact in the setup program shows HDD to be none means either the drive has failed or controller gone (its usually the drive), RMA it

Nick

Irish Guitarist

yoyo wrote: »

You need to choose the option to boot from the CD/DVD drive to boot off the Windows disc. Having said that it looks as though your laptop isn't picking up any hard disk, if the bios is reporting no bootable device found, it could be due to a corrupt install but usually that means not finding any boot source like HD. Most laptops when you hit F12 at startup open a "boot menu" where you can choose the dvd drive, if not look in the bios for boot priority settings, setting CD/DVD Rom drive to be first (top priority).
Edit: The fact in the setup program shows HDD to be none means either the drive has failed or controller gone (its usually the drive), RMA it

Nick

Thanks. The Windows 7 disc wasn't included so booting from disc isn't an option. As it's a brand new laptop I think I think I'll just bring it back, although I'm not sure that I didn't cause this problem myself.

yoyo

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Thanks. The Windows 7 disc wasn't included so booting from disc isn't an option. As it's a brand new laptop I think I think I'll just bring it back, although I'm not sure that I didn't cause this problem myself.

A software screw up wont cause a hardware issue (i.e: a piece of software won't "break" a hard disk), so no I'd blame the laptop, let warranty sort it

Nick