Issues booting to UEFI/BIOS on acer win8 laptop, OS is corrupt

[Krynn72]

I feel like I must be missing something really simple. Basically I have a customer with a corrupt windows 8 install (viruses from what he was telling me, FBI lockout and likely many more kinds in addition). It doesn't boot to windows for me to do anything, and the only screen I can get to is a error report with the following.
-----------------
Boot configuration data file missing some required information.
File: \BCD
error: Qxc000000d

Press Escape for UEFI firmware settings
-----------------

Pressing Esc does nothing on this screen, doesn't seem to even register a keypress. I cannot get it to boot into bios either. I've tried all the function keys, delete, esc, etc while I can see the ACER POST splash screen, but none of them work. When it boots all I see is the ACER logo for approx 2 seconds, then the screen i described above.

I also plugged in a external usb keyboard just to see if maybe the keys simply weren't responding, but that didn't help.

I have to be missing something simple, right? I need to be able to at least boot from a cd/usb to reload the OS/attempt to repair it. Any ideas?

 

[DonS]

Win 8

I would be a little concerned you can not get into BIOS... How do you know this is a Virus/FBI moneypak infection if it does not boot?

I think my next step would be to pull the hard drive, slave it to another PC and scan it to remove virues/malware, then see if it boots normally. May not be the solution if there actually is corruption. But this seems a bit dead in the water the way it is at the moment.

 

[mr m]

Yank the HDD and slave it to your bench rig.

I just had a Samsung/8 notebook that had the FBI ransomware and I was never able to get to the BIOS or a boot menu no matter what I did. I remotely ran the MBAM and MSSE and not one piece of malware was found.

I reinstalled the HDD and after sitting at the white screen for 30 minutes while wasting my time Googling how to get to the boot menu I glanced over and noticed the notebook was at the desktop. I quickly ran my USB/Htman tool and it cleaned the .exe causing all the mess.

I never did find out how to get to the BIOS/Boot menu.

 

[Krynn72]

I would be a little concerned you can not get into BIOS... How do you know this is a Virus/FBI moneypak infection if it does not boot?

Customer had gotten the same virus on another laptop and had us remove it. He recognized it right away and came straight to us. I have not be able to see it myself, but he said that it was the same thing as before.

I think my next step would be to pull the hard drive, slave it to another PC and scan it to remove virues/malware, then see if it boots normally. May not be the solution if there actually is corruption. But this seems a bit dead in the water the way it is at the moment.

Hrm, yeah I suppose I should try that. I already backed up his data that way but didn't think to scan it since he wanted it just reloaded. I wonder if I reformat the drive externally if I will still get hung up on that screen.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I feel like I must be missing something really simple. Basically I have a customer with a corrupt windows 8 install (viruses from what he was telling me, FBI lockout and likely many more kinds in addition). It doesn't boot to windows for me to do anything, and the only screen I can get to is a error report with the following.
-----------------
Boot configuration data file missing some required information.
File: \BCD
error: Qxc000000d

Press Escape for UEFI firmware settings
-----------------

Pressing Esc does nothing on this screen, doesn't seem to even register a keypress. I cannot get it to boot into bios either. I've tried all the function keys, delete, esc, etc while I can see the ACER POST splash screen, but none of them work. When it boots all I see is the ACER logo for approx 2 seconds, then the screen i described above.

I also plugged in a external usb keyboard just to see if maybe the keys simply weren't responding, but that didn't help.

I have to be missing something simple, right? I need to be able to at least boot from a cd/usb to reload the OS/attempt to repair it. Any ideas?

Model number of that Acer would be helpful. Hard to google bios settings on a generic Acer.

 

[Easy PC]

Reboot the machine and hold down F2, this will get you into the Bios. Enable boot menu option F12, and change UEFI to Legacy. Put a live disk of Kaspersky into the drive and reboot and press F12,and select dvd drive and run the scan from the disc.

 

[Krynn72]

I put the drive on my win 7 bench machine and this time it prompted me to run check disk, so might be the issue there. I'll let it run overnight since its taking a long time. Ran it through MHDD though and everything came up good.

Model number of that Acer would be helpful. Hard to google bios settings on a generic Acer.

Its a Aspire M5-581T(G) ultrabook.

Reboot the machine and hold down F2, this will get you into the Bios. Enable boot menu option F12, and change UEFI to Legacy. Put a live disk of Kaspersky into the drive and reboot and press F12,and select dvd drive and run the scan from the disc.

I'll try that when I get in tomorrow, but I was mashing f2 as it was powering up and nothing happened, don't know if holding it down instead will make much difference?

 

[angry_geek]

You're going to run chkdsk all night on a drive already displaying potential failure? Are you sure that's a good idea?

 

[JustInspired]

Here's hoping you already have a nice image of that drive. You do right?

I have found that stupid Windows 8 does not actually shut laptops down. I may be wrong but I found it puts them into some kind of comatose stasis instead. I get the feeling that this is how it "boots much faster" than other older, less worthy (perfectly good) operating systems.

The other day I had to remove the charger and the battery, hold down the power switch for a few seconds etc then re-attach power before I could actually get F2 to register and take me to the BIOS settings. Frickin' SHUT DOWN!!!

Stupid Windows 8

 

[altrenda]

You are right about the Hybrid Shutdown, a kind of sleep mode to improve start up times/

You can do this from a command prompt

shutdown /s /full / t 0

 

[Krynn72]

You're going to run chkdsk all night on a drive already displaying potential failure? Are you sure that's a good idea?

Here's hoping you already have a nice image of that drive. You do right?

Imaged and the only data the customer cares about is backed up on a separate drive as well. As I mentioned though, MHDD scanned the sectors and they all came up healthy and fast, so it doesn't seem like it will fail, at least not mechanically.

I'd heard about the hybrid shut down stuff before, and I've encountered issues before which I think are caused by it. It'd be nice if there's a way to force a true shutdown on a misbehaving system (where you can't get to the cmd prompt). It just seems so much more difficult working on a win 8 system when the OS itself is having trouble. There seems to be far fewer options of things to attempt than all previous versions.

 

[Krynn72]

So that fixed it... sort of. Don't really understand it, but check disk finished, reported that it did find and repair some issues. When I put the drive back in, I still got the same screen, but this time hitting escape works, and I can get into the bios with no problem at all. Did a reload of windows 8 and everything seems a-ok. Not sure what to make of it.