Boot error - Recovery CD will not work.

Hey there. I searched around the forum but none of the stuff I am finding seems to work or be relevant to my issue.

I have an Acer Aspire 5050 running Windows 7. (64 bit.)
The other day my computer completely crashed and wouldn't let me do anything. Even after leaving it for a while to sort itself out I couldn't so much as move the mouse, so I just forced a switch off.

When I turned it back on I was getting your standard 'Media test failed, cable not connected, no operating system found' error.

I started the recovery CD's and it stalls on stage 2, 'Check password.'

It doesn't give me a dialog box to type in any password, I have no idea what it might be other than my user ID password and it will not highlight any of the recovery options, only exit. (See picture attached.)

I can't get beyond the boot screen to run anything and I can't get the recovery CD to work so I'm not sure what to do.
I contacted Acer support and they just gave me the stock answer to use the recovery CD's.

Does anyone have any ideas?


Thanks a lot for the help.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v336/Dreadgerbil/DSCF9464.jpg

 

Dreadgerbil,

To the best that I know, that error message means that your hard drive is not being recognized, and if that's the case, no method or amount of recoveries or repairs or re-installs is going to work.

Your hard drive has likely become unseated (poor connection). Take it out and put it back in a few times. Laptops these days usually have only one or two screws securing them, so this is an easy job. Check your manual if you're in doubt how to go about it.

I recently had a Dell laptop that worked fine except when I was trying to image the drive I was getting sporadic read errors. In desperation I took out the drive, reseated it, doing that a few times and all was well afterward. It was about a 3-minute job, and two minutes of that was to find my jeweler's screwdrivers.

Good luck. Sorry, can't help you with your password question, but if I'm right about the above, you likely won't need it.

P.S. What was that Acer support person thinking?

Oh, it's also possible that your CD or DVD drive is exhibiting the same problem, but if that were the case I'd think the boot would bypass that drive and go to your hard drive and boot OK.

 

Hey, thanks.
I've removed and put it back 3 or 4 times now and still no dice. I wonder if it could be a broken hard drive or some issue with the pins?

I'd check the CD/DVD drive but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to it.

I have no idea what Acer were thinking but when I finally, after no less than 54 attempts, managed to resubmit my issue they just forwarded it straight on to the pay support team. We'll see what happens.

I'm guessing I may have to buy a new hard drive, but I'd prefer not to buy one until I'm positive that's the problem.

 

Hmmm...sorry to hear that. I thought it was going to be easy, but I should have known better!

To partially answer your question about whether your hard drive is bad or not, for around $20-25 you can get an adapter that you could plug your Acer hard drive into (I don't know what type drive you have, whether IDE, SATA or what, so you'll have to get the correct adapter). Then plug the USB cable from the adapter into another PC. To the other PC the Acer drive will appear as an external drive and if the drive is still good you should be able to access it and read it like any other drive. If you can access it, that probably means that Windows is corrupted is why it won't boot, but you can at least try copying off vital files that you may have on it. If you can't access it, it's almost certain that the drive is fried. This might be worth a shot, depending on how badly you want to know and how important your data is.

If the other PC's BIOS allows, you might try booting from the Acer drive while it's still attached, just to see if the same thing happens as when it's in your laptop. I don't know if this risks boogering the other PC or not, though...it depends on the BIOS settings and what the fallbacks are if a boot device isn't found where the BIOS is pointed to.

If you have any questions about the adapter option, ask and I or someone else will answer as best we can.

There's another recent thread with a similar problem...fellow named Mattitude, I believe...you should find it within the last 2-3 days. He tried the Linux boot approach, which didn't work, and finally said he was going to go with the adapter...haven't heard how that turned out.

I don't know what to say about the CD/DVD drive other than what I've already said. I suppose that it's possible that the boot process can't get past that drive if that drive is bad, but I think it's unlikely unless the BIOS somehow got set to boot only from the CD drive.