Acer Nitro 5 - no bootable device

[Haole Boy]

Aloha. Customer brought me an Acer Nitro 5 (model number Nitro AN515-55) that has a 'will not boot' issue. I get a "No Bootable Device" error. BIOS does not show the NVMe SSD in the list of hard drives (it is the only drive installed). Per customer: " It was working fine until my 3 y.o. decided he wanted to play on the laptop, opened it and proceeded to push 1 million buttons at once.". I have no idea how this can cause the SSD to not be recognized by BIOS.

I can get into BIOS, and tried disabling Fast Startup, enabled F12 to select boot device, and changed the SATA mode from 'Optane with RAID', to 'Optane without RAID' . But the internal hard drive still does not show up. BIOS level was V1.0. I updated to the most recent level (V2.06), but no change.

I've pulled the NVMe drive and successfully accessed it and backed it up on another computer using a NVMe - USB adapter. So it seems to be OK.

I'm assuming enabling / disabling Secure Boot is not worth trying if the drive is not seen in BIOS.

I'm stumped. Suggestions greatly appreciated.

Mahalo,

Harry Z

 

[Sky-Knight]

Reset BIOS to factory defaults?

 

[Haole Boy]

Reset BIOS to factory defaults?

Forgot to mention this one. Yes, I did try this. And just did it again with the new version BIOS. Still no SSD seen in BIOS.

 

[Diggs]

I'm assuming enabling / disabling Secure Boot is not worth trying if the drive is not seen in BIOS.

I'm not so sure but I don't have enough knowledge to be sure. If the BIOS is expecting GPT and the drive is MBR I don't think it will be seen (and visa-versa).

 

[NviGate Systems]

Best solution is to have a spare SSD and see if it's detected.

If it's not detected, you have a mainboard failure. If it is detected and you can install Windows, then it was the SSD.

 

[Blues]

We don't know how much force the child pushed those keys with there easily could have been enough for to damage a controller or the circuitry and only partially break the PC.

 

[Haole Boy]

Apologies for not following up on this one for future reference. IIRC, the NVMe SSD was showing a SMART error, so I bought a new one. It did not show up in BIOS either. Then I noticed that this machine has another slot for an NVMe drive. Put the drive in the second slot and viola! it works! Not sure how many machines out there have a 2nd NVMe slot, but it saved the day for this customer.

Mahalo for all your assistance!

 

[Blues]

Sometime one slot supports NVMe and the other will only support SATA cards that use the same type slot. It is best to very in the manuals that the slot being used fully supports the card/drive being installed.

 

[Haole Boy]

Sometime one slot supports NVMe and the other will only support SATA cards that use the same type slot. It is best to very in the manuals that the slot being used fully supports the card/drive being installed.

Thanx for the info. IIRC, the slot was labelled for the NVMe drive

 

[nlinecomputers]

Apologies for not following up on this one for future reference. IIRC, the NVMe SSD was showing a SMART error, so I bought a new one. It did not show up in BIOS either. Then I noticed that this machine has another slot for an NVMe drive. Put the drive in the second slot and viola! it works! Not sure how many machines out there have a 2nd NVMe slot, but it saved the day for this customer.

Mahalo for all your assistance!

Dead man walking. You have a motherboard failure on the first slot. Wouldn’t guarantee that it will not come back.

 

[Haole Boy]

Dead man walking. You have a motherboard failure on the first slot. Wouldn’t guarantee that it will not come back.

No argument with that, but my customer set always goes the cheapest route...