I did a single zero pass format of my hard drive on my acer laptop. I erased all data on the unallocated partitions and the two primary partitions. I was going to erase my external hard drive as well but the boot program I’m using (active@ KILLDISK for DOS v.4.1) to do the zero pass could no longer detect it after I finished wiping the hard drive even if I used a different USB port.
So I tried to install Windows Vista Basic which is what was on the hard drive before. I set the Bios to boot from CD/DVD first. The systems prompts me to press any key to boot from CD. I press any key but nothing happens. I press it a few more times until it starts beeping each time I press a key. Still nothing happens. I restart with a basic Dell keyboard plugged into a USB port and try again, but with the same result. The laptop continues to ask me to press any key and only beeps when I do.
The only thing I did different than with other computers was to “Clear Log File before Start”.
This poor laptop is dead until it gets an operating system.