Acer Aspire 4820TG won't boot, stuck in first screen

I did a hard shutdown by holding the power button until it switched off. After that it comes up with the Acer screen where you can press F2 to access BIOS and get stucked there.

If I unplug the hard drive it goes further and complains about cable connection of course but I can press F2 and access BIOS.

I have checked the hard drive in another computer and it seems ok.

What can I do?

 

What happens if you don't press F2? Does it get stuck on Acer-screen or does it get pas it and get stuck on back screen with a blinking cursor?

 

It is stuck even if I press f2 or not


I think I solved the problem. I changed SATA Mode to IDE and then it works. Funny though as it has been AHCI mode before and worked.

 

Inspect SMART attributes of the HDD - this sort of action can signify a problem with HDD.

 

OK, how do I do that?

Or, the brutal switchoff I did might damage the structure of the hard drive? A reformat might solve that?

 

Re-formating is not needed - Windows would detect problems with NTFS partition although you might want to right-click on each logical drive and choose Properties, Tools, Check for Errors.

As for the SMART status - you may use a free version of HD Tune to display all the attributes. You will have to study it carefully though - just that something is within limits doesn't make it OK. For example drives would allow for 256 re-allocated sectors before the SMART error would be triggered but even one re-allocated sector is a cause for alarm and HDD replacement.

EDIT: Come to think of it - it would be easier if you posted screenshots of all SMART attributes - I'll know what to look for.

 

Thank you very much. I will look into that and come back here.