No boot device

[wardoursecure]

I have just replaced the casing on a windows 8 Acer e1 531 laptop.
Customers daughter had dropped it and the power cable was busted also, so case and cable replaced. Starts ok BUT says no boot device press any key

Bios shows the Seagate drive and if I plug it into my PC I can see the data (which has been copied)


However no matter what I try I can't get it to boot. I can boot from a Win 8 USB to the recovery console but that is it, it either tells me the partition is locked or no windows installation can be found.

I am happy to N&P but can't access the recovery partition

 

[FremontPC]

Are you in Legacy or UEFI boot mode?

 

[jkurgeek]

• It's good that you copied the data. I image the drive whenever possible.
  
• Try booting from a Linux USB (like PartedMagic) to see if you can access the drive. So you know the laptop is actually able to read data from it.
• Test the drive with gSmartControl or similar. Just because you were able to copy data off doesn't mean it isn't damaged.

 

[nlinecomputers]

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-drive-where-windows-is-installed-is-locked

 

[lcoughey]

If I were you, I'd get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive before doing anything.

 

[FremontPC]

See the comment by "boozi" in nline's link too. I don't think attempting to repair MBR is going to do anything on a UEFI system that's using GPT. Boozi outlines the GPT equivalent.

And what lcoughey said.

 

[wardoursecure]

Are you in Legacy or UEFI boot mode?

Tried both boot modes and both give the same result.
In legacy toy get the alt f10 option but this doesn't start either

 

[FremontPC]

Switch 'er back to UEFI, or it will never boot Win8. It has to find an active EFI partition that points to the Win8 partition. It's not going to find that in Legacy, because Legacy is looking for MBR (as if you'd bailed on Win8 and installed Win7 instead).

You'll need a UEFI/EFI bootable Win8 recovery CD or USB drive. Per Nline's suggestion, go to this page:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-drive-where-windows-is-installed-is-locked

and look for the post by "boozi" and click (show more). He gives a pretty good runthrough of the process.

Don't bother with the fix at the top of the page, that's not going to work on a GPT partitioned disk with UEFI.

But best to clone/backup the disk in case you slip a keystroke.

 

[wardoursecure]

OK tried that

diskpart and list disk shows disk 0 as the installed driver 465Gb with 0 free
once selected list vol only shows DVD- Rom volume 0 and my recovery USB volume 1

 

[FremontPC]

Sounds like the partition table info got blasted. You're missing the EFI and Recovery partitions, at least. At this point, I'd be slaving the disk, to your bench system an looking at the drive in Disk Management, but I expect it will say the same. Check it with Crystal Disk Info to see if CDI throws a red flag on it. If so, then it's new drive time, and likely the customer doesn't have the factory restore disks, so you'll have to order them from Acer.

If CDI says the drive is ok, then you might be able to get the partitions back. Did you make a sector-by-sector clone/backup already?

 

[wardoursecure]

Acer want £51 for the discs and I am sure the customer won't want to be paying for them.
When slaved it shows just the data (acer drive)

 

[FremontPC]

Unfortunately, you're going to have to recover those partitions for this to work and that's going to cost him too, even more if his drive is going bad. So it looks like the beastie is doomed. At least you have his data.

Well, you mentioned the N&P. If the drive checks out ok, I guess that would be the way to go. Sell him a backup drive/software too.

 

[wardoursecure]

It's his daughters laptop, school stuff etc.
Not the first one from them thats been dropped , carried by the screen etc.

First thing I did was copy the data.

 

[FremontPC]

Well, if he decides to bail on it and leave the wreckage with you, maybe try the Easeus or Aomei partition recovery tools. I don't know if Testdisk would work on this, but if you had the sector-by-sector backup, you could always try, try again.

 

[wardoursecure]

Seems they just want it back and not bothered about the recovery partition so I made a boot USB and created a Windows 8 Core install USB and installed. Used the Mediacreationtool.exe
It activated automatically and updated.
All data copied back so they are happy

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Have not used this product, I have used backupper though and like it pretty well. Maybe this would be a good fit for you?

http://www.backup-utility.com/onekey-recovery.html

 

[Porthos]

Have not used this product, I have used backupper though and like it pretty well. Maybe this would be a good fit for you?

http://www.backup-utility.com/onekey-recovery.html

I use it on EVERY Nuke and Pave after every thing is set up right before I restore customer data.

 

[wardoursecure]

Interesting I will look at this

 

[gadgetfixup]

I don't care much for backupper as you have to manually create a recovery partition if you want to be able to restore a full backup. SO, you have to install the partition manager, create the extra partition which is viewable and then do you backup to that partition. I still have never figured out why they call it one key when it takes several clicks to do a restore. I'm used to the old Acronis, creates a secure and hidden partition, backs up to that hidden partition and it's really one key to access the recovery, even if the machine won't boot.

I will admit I didn't do a lot of testing with backupper so I might have missed the obvious but for me I'll stick to Acronis. I'm not sure how I'd walk a customer through a restore when the system doesn't boot with backupper.

 

[FremontPC]

Inbargains -

Sounds like you've had a fair bit of experience with that feature of Acronis. I shy away from the bells and whistles, just use the core backup/restore functions, but you've had good luck with the Secure Zone and recovering from that? Do you use the "Nonstop Backup" feature?