Acer Aspire E1-572 not booting

[mikehende]

This unit is not booting either off the HDD or the DVD drive [trying Puppy or Knoppix], I can only get into the BIOS, F12 doesn't show any boot options at all, the boot options are only showing in the BIOS, anything I can try please?

 

[donetao]

Hi I'm not familiar with your machine. You might give this a look!!

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/make-acer-laptop-boot-cd-51622.html

 

[mikehende]

I swapped HDD's but it is asking me for product key using my win8 Standard disk, far as I know, all win8 key is embedded in the BIOS?

 

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

Yes, it should be but what is on the hard drive that you swapped out?

 

[AWS]

Open notepad and put this in it:

[Channel]
Retail

[VL]
0

Save the file as EI.cfg.
Copy the file to the sources folder.

There might be a file already named that in the source folder. If there is replace content with the above.

What that does is lets you bypass the license key and pick which version to install. Once installed you can activate with your key. Make sure when you get to the part that asks for which version to install you install the version your key is for.

 

[mikehende]

I just contaced Acer, they said the reason why it's asking for the product key is because I am using the wrong version, what I need is win8.1 Standard 64bit.