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I just installed Windows 7 Enterprise (no sp, v6.1.7600) to an Acer Aspire 5560. This problem is 100% reproducible on all 7 of the Acer 5560's I've tried it on. The installer froze instead of rebooting, a forced power cycle was required. The first boot config session also froze when it should have rebooted, a forced power cycle was required. A normal desktop session will also freeze on restart & shutdown, a forced power cycle is required. The system never says it was shutoff improperly.

Attempting a suspend (closing the laptop lid) will leave a blinking cursor on the screen, a forced power cycle is required. This failed suspend process trashed something, preventing a normal boot and preventing a "fix start up" boot. It also prevents BIOS from allowing alternative boot devices or entering pre-boot setup until both AC and battery are removed. Attempting to "fix startup" with the install disc I just installed it with says, the "...System Recovery Options are not compatible with the version of Windows it's trying to repair...", even though not a single Windows Update was preformed. The system is left completely unusable. A hibernate has never been attempted.

A coworker discovered installing Windows 7 Pro (6.1.7600) does not exhibit the freeze problem. Same individual also discovered, when installing Enterprise on top of a fresh Pro install, the problem is also no longer present. An image of the working install can be successfully placed on other laptops, meaning I'm not dead in the water.

Any clues as to the root problem?

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  • What was the source you were using to install Enterprise? A disc? USB drive? Is it an image? Is it Microsoft supplied media, or media you created yourselves? Not trying to be harsh; it's just best to get as much information as possible :)
    – WillemToorenburgh
    Commented Apr 15, 2014 at 19:32
  • From a burnt ISO, provided by the parent organization. We use some sort of MAK license. On a side note, after messing with the partition a bit, I noticed it was GPT. The HDD originally was MBR before I reloaded it. I found this thread which appears to explain my exact problem. I'll close this question if it works.
    – Chris S
    Commented Apr 15, 2014 at 20:08

3 Answers 3

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The Acer Aspire 5560 has a buggy UEFI implementation, it doesn't like GPT disks. Forcing MBR has resolved this issue. I checked on my coworker's Win7 Pro->Ent image, it is also MBR, thus why it worked.

Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/82200-35-acer-aspire-5560g-hangs-restart

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I've also had to work on an Acer Aspire 5560 laptop. As said by others, it does not work well with GPT, but works excellent with MBR.

In my case, I installed a brand new SSD and attempted to install Windows 10 64 bit on there using a USB3.0 drive that I prepared with the Windows Media Creation Tool. This did not work, as the USB3.0 drive was nog recognized. There wasn't any option to disable secure boot and the USB3.0 drive did not appear in the list of boot drives.

I then tried the exact same with an USB2.0 drive which was recognized by the system and showed the Windows installation window. I followed the steps until the system had to reboot: it got stuck on rebooting. Hard reset of the laptop and the Windows installation continued. Windows had finally installed succesfully, but upon rebooting (or even shutting the system off) it always got stuck again.

Some research later, I came across this SuperUser post and decided to follow the tips from the TomsHardware forum. Unfortunately, the specific fix mentioned there only works when you install using a Windows 10 CD/DVD installation disk which I did not have.

The solution

What worked for me was to create the bootable USB2.0 stick using a Windows 10 ISO (create one using the Windows Media Creation Tool) using Rufus. The setting that needed to be changed is 'Partition scheme' from GPT to MBR.

Rufus Partition Scheme GPT to MBR

After that, I ran the Windows 10 installation on the laptop and when asked 'Where do you want to install Windows' made sure to delete all partitions until there wasn't a partition left, but only 'Disk # (0 probably) Unallocated Space'. Select the disk and continue the installation. Rebooting/shutting down now works properly!

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When I tried to install Windows from a flash drive - I did not see the prompt "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD..."

What worked for me was to manually delete the EFI folder on the root of the media (source). Plus, I manually converted the disk to MBR, but I think this is not necessary.

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