Boot to BIOS and boots from external disc but not from Hard drive

Hi,

My Acer netbook has developed some kind of fault and I am unsure as to what I ought to do,

The netbook does boot to BIOS and also will boot up from an external drive...but will not boot normally.

I am thinking of replacing the hard drive but don`t know if there could be something else wrong...it says sometimes that it can`t read it and from this I am not sure if there is something else wrong...if I change the drive does it sound as though things will work ?

I realise that there`s not much to go on here but would appreciate a point of view...there are also a couple of other intermittent faults such as certain letters and numbers not working and then everything is fine for a while...but this hard drive thing has be wondering if it is time to get a new device !

Hope you may be able to help or give some advice,

Many thanks in advance,

Steve

Hello Steve and welcome to Seven Forums.

It's possible that something may have damaged or corrupted the boot info contained on the hard drive. One of the Forum experts prepared this troubleshooting guide for failure to start issues. It's time consuming but has helped many solve startup problems.

Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

Another possibility is that your Acer has a hidden recovery partition. If it does, another option could be to restore your computer to factory specs. It would erase everything on the hard drive and make your machine exactly like it was the day you brought it home from the store. It's called the eRecovery Management Program.

Acer Support - Answers, E-Mail, Chat - How do I restore my computer using the eRecovery Management program?

Please post back if anything helped or not, or if you have any other questions..

Thanks for the link etc...I will try this and get back to you to let you know the results,

I should add that the boot from the external disc is a linux OS...I also found out that my son had dropped this recently and may well be the cause of the trouble...I only found this out a short while ago as he had kept it to himself...typical !

Anyway...this will probably take a few days to get round to doing but I will get back,

Thanks again.

Not a problem, Steve. Take as much time as you need. There's always Forum members around to assist.

Enter BIOS setup to check if HD is detected. If not try reinstalling it to see if it will revive. You can google a video showing exactly how it's done. If not replace it.

After replacement Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7