Acer Aspire Switch 10 SW5-012 Refuses to boot anything but Windows recovery.

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CupTheYoutuber

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Dec 8, 2011
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So, I deleted my recovery partition to try to reclaim some of the tiny hard drive on this thing, without reading into it (Stupid, I know) and I ended up bricking the windows install. So I thought, "Oh well, who cares I'll install linux.", and I followed one of the guides.

Now, here comes the problem. When I deleted the recovery partition, windows booted to a blue screen saying I needed to repair my computer, not a big deal right? Just boot linux and move on. Well, not really, because even if I select my USB disk in the boot menu, windows overrides that and just dumps me back at that recovery screen over and over again no matter what I do. I've tried turning secureboot on and off, wiping secure boots settings, changing boot orders, using the f12 menu. Nothing.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get this to at the very least get to the grub splash screen, I'm dead set on getting some form of linux to work on this as I dont want to pay Acer for repairs.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I forgot to add switch to the name. Whoops.
 
Solution
Go to your BIOS, turn off UEFI and change to legacy boot. You can then boot to whatever you want, format the hard drive and install Linux.

Windows 8 is a pain in the ass.

Clayto1332

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Feb 10, 2015
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Go to your BIOS, turn off UEFI and change to legacy boot. You can then boot to whatever you want, format the hard drive and install Linux.

Windows 8 is a pain in the ass.
 
Solution

CupTheYoutuber

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I cant find any option in my bios to turn UEFI off or change to legacy boot. Just system information, secureboot settings, BIOS security settings, and boot order settings. None of which have any options in them to do that.

I also forgot to add Switch to the name of my netbook like a dipshit, so that might be why.
 

Clayto1332

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Feb 10, 2015
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According to this article:

http://community.acer.com/t5/Notebooks-Netbooks/Aspire-E1-510-Windwos-7/m-p/235060#M38693

A bios update will give you the legacy boot option. Since you can't boot into Windows this can be tricky. You would have to create a bootable USB drive as outlined in one of the articles in this thread:

http://community.acer.com/t5/Notebooks-Netbooks/Aspire-E1-510-Windwos-7/td-p/232794

You will follow the same steps but will probably have a different bios version. You can find that by going to ACER's site and looking up your laptop using its SNID:

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

Sorry man, things were a lot easier before this UEFI stuff came about....
 

CupTheYoutuber

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Okay, so I managed to update the BIOS and the firmware and I still cant find any options to enable legacy boot anywhere. And the system still refuses to boot from my USB.
 

Clayto1332

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Feb 10, 2015
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Are you still being dumped back into recovery? Does your flash drive have bootable Linux on it? Or a Linux installation?
I hate to say it man but you might have to repair your Windows 8 installation to get the thing working. Not every UEFI capable laptop BIOS is this way... If you have another computer, you can download a blank Windows 8 ISO from here (for the time being):

https://userscloud.com/rqk8hut8629o

Then you can find an ISO burning program like poweriso. Just beware, if you were to get poweriso from poweriso.com, you have to de-select all of the adware and promotional offers from the installer as you go. If you boot the ISO to a DVD, UEFI will recognize it as a boot device and it will give you advanced troubleshooting and the option to reinstall Windows.
 

CupTheYoutuber

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Yeah, my USB has bootable linux. I do have a Windows 8.1 32 bit disk I can put on my USB to reinstall Windows. I'm going to try a few more distros before I completely give up on linux. though.
 

CupTheYoutuber

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I'll keep you posted. I would definitely tell people to shy away specifically from the Switch 10 as even if it is possible, its probably not worth all of this work anyways.
 

r3tr0freak

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Jun 4, 2015
1
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4,510
Same problem here: The boot options in the bios are not editable. I installed latest bios and firmware. Did anybody find out any trick to get linux running on this machine?


---> Ahhh!!! Got it: After setting the "Supervisor Password" in bios, all greyed out options (including secure boot settings) are available! Ha!
 

haiphan02

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Jun 24, 2015
1
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4,510



Did you get it to work? I'm in the same boat, please reply..
 

kbeurskens

Estimable
Jun 26, 2015
1
0
4,510


With a Supervisor Password set I can switch Secure Boot between Enable and Disable, but I still *cannot* change to other boot methods than "Standard". The option then IS grayed indeed, but there's only one option (no []-brackets) so you can't choose for something else. Do I overlook something?
 

SpeedxP

Estimable
Aug 7, 2015
1
0
4,510
Make sure your usb is UEFI 32bit bootable (/EFI/bootia32.efi)
Acer Aspire Switch 10 support to boot efi 32bit only and not support legacy boot.

Acer Aspire Switch 10 use wimboot for run windows,if you delete recovery partition, it's become unable to boot
(C:\Windows\ store only link file to wim image in recovery partition and update file)

Example : gParted Bootable USB is support efi 32bit , you can try to download and boot them.
 

philmcneal

Estimable
Sep 18, 2015
1
0
4,510


i've seen this solution posted https://gist.github.com/franga2000/2154d09f864894b8fe84 but I was wondering if this laptop can take a distro like this one https://www.linuxliteos.com/

man this must be an easier way!
 

Leslie601298

Estimable
Oct 4, 2015
1
0
4,510
For anyone that has this problem on switch 10. DO NOT DISABLE SECURE BOOT CHECK! Just add your supervisor password and the Secure Boot Mode settings should be available. If you go and disable the secure boot check it will lock these settings out. Been trying to figure this one out for about a week and then just stumbled on to it when I was working with another switch 10 tablet (Because the battery died on the first one, Waiting on the chargers for both of them). Put the supervisor password in and noticed that the stuff was shaded as if it could be changed. Disabled the secure boot check and it disabled all the settings in the mode they were in. Changed the secure boot check back to enabled and they were unlocked again. Hope this helps. After you unlock the settings you can add another UEFI file as trusted so it will boot from it. Worked for me. Booted a MSDaRT (Microsoft Diagnostics And Recovery Toolset) disk from USB.
 

KarmaBV

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Nov 22, 2015
1
0
4,510


I think the only option you have NOW is TO PAY ACER SERVICE TO MAKE YOUR ACER S10 REVIVE ! I They will remove the HDD and "flash" all 3 partitions (recovery, Windows 8.1, ABfiles). As soon as your Acer revive, prepare to put your SD card (at least 32 GB), one 4port USB hub, one 32GB USB to make the ultimate tools for recovery ( I used both Windows Backup and Acronis to make a bootable USB for partitions recovery...). You can email me for more instructions. My Acer Service charged me only 15 USD for this repair.
Good Luck
 

Don_5_

Estimable
Dec 17, 2015
1
0
4,510
I have the same issue with this crappy ACER Switch 10. I made some progress though. I tried a bunch of usb drives. The only one that shows up after mashing F12 is my PNY attache 8 gig drive. Keep trying different usb drives and then try installing from it.
 

Leolipop

Commendable
Jun 23, 2016
1
0
1,510
I had the same issues as mentione above.The solution came wing the upgrade to windows 10.After they were installed form windows update i noticed that my C drive was no longer 21gb and had expanded to 28,5 , no more hidden recovery partition! i used a flash drive and made it from windows tools a recovery drive and thats it....For no reason after cleaning up the c drive to get rid of the 8.1 installation , my disk had 12gb used so i reseted the pc without the use of the recovery drive i had made and now i am at 21gb of free space ! Job done both for making a usable recovery partition since the hidden one was unusable and also gaining that wasted disk space.
 
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