I had a hard drive failure in this laptop, and both hard drives I've put in it show up in BIOS, but do not show up in the boot menu. The thumb drives don't show up in either BIOS or the boot menu.
Legacy mode is not an option, UEFI is the only option in my BIOS.
There is a BIOS update through Acer but it requires a working operating system to apply.
Here's what I've tried.
- Turning Secure boot on and off
- Booting off a Windows 8 USB thumbdrive, one created with the Windows 7 USB tool and another created with Rufus. Both of them boot on my personal laptop just fine. Does not show up in BIOS or boot menu.
- Booting off a Windows 7 USB thumbdrive, created by the Windows 7 USB tool. Drive boots on my personal laptop just fine. Does not show up in BIOS or boot menu.
- Took the hard drive out my personal laptop, running Windows 10 and put it inside this laptop. Does not boot. It shows up in BIOS, however it doesn't show up on the boot menu. Maybe it doesn't like Windows 10?
I have a spare 20 GB SATA hard drive that I'm going to install Windows 8 on using my personal laptop and then I'll swap it into this laptop, if that doesn't boot, what's next?
EDIT:
This laptop did not come with a CD/DVD unit. All the ones I had were oversized. So I detached the touchpad to make room for a DVD unit and I was able to boot up a DVD I had lying around of Linux Mint! I am going to try installing it to see if it works.
I tried FreeDOS, but it didn't work. I am going to try Hiren's boot CD next.