Laptop attempts to boot from HDD without an operating system installed.
Laptop attempts to boot from HDD without an operating system installed.
Hi, I see you're having some issues with your laptop setup. It sounds like the old recovery partition is still present on the HDD, which is why it's not booting from the SSD. You removed it using Partition Wizard, but when you try to boot, it keeps trying the old HDD. You can select the SSD in BIOS as a boot device, but it seems the system isn't recognizing it properly. The beep and strange characters suggest a bootloader issue. Try disabling the recovery partition temporarily or checking if the OS is corrupted. If needed, you might need to reset the BIOS settings or reinstall the OS. Let me know what you find!
You asked if Acer's BIOS settings prevent modifications to components. I’m aware Lenovo implements similar protections, which can be frustrating.
Samsung SSD EVO 840 contains 120 GB of storage, and the hard drive was included with the laptop during purchase.
It's a laptop, I didn't attempt to swap the drives, but I took out the hard drive and then everything functions flawlessly (except when I reinstalled it).
The HDD remained connected during Windows installation on the SSD. If you didn’t disconnect it, the new OS would have written its boot data onto the old OS, causing both to fail after formatting. You likely formatted the entire drive rather than just removing a recovery partition. When connecting it to another PC, you should see a partition labeled "System reserved."
The issue arises because the laptop's BIOS doesn't recognize the SSD when it's in use. The HDD wasn't present during Windows installation on the SSD, so no system reservation exists. After formatting the HDD (excluding the recovery area) and removing the recovery partition, the removal process required a reboot, but the system began behaving oddly afterward.