Trouble installing Windows 10 on a 2009 Acer Aspire laptop

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Colonel Sanders

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I'm trying to install Windows 10 on this old Acer Aspire laptop and I'm running into problems. First thing I tried was creating a standard bootable USB drive using the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. When I try to boot from that (using either the laptop's boot options in BIOS or the F12 boot menu) I get a flashing cursor for a few moments, I see the W10 logo flash, then back to flashing cursor, then it either sits there until it reboots on its own, or I did once get a "Windows has encountered an error and needs to restart" message.

Tried creating burning an ISO to a DVD and booting from that, but no go (I think the optical drive is hosed on this laptop.) So I tried a USB external DVD drive with the disc I burned, same results as above.

Kinda throwing up my hands here as to how I can install Windows on this damn thing, lol.
 
Possible dumb question, since I've haven't used the actual Microsoft Media Creation tool to do anything but download ISO images, as I use Rufus to take my various Windows ISOs to USB, but is the media creation tool creating a UEFI only installation media? With Rufus you can select MBR and BIOS when creating your bootable USB so it will work on old machines that are pre UEFI..........................

Also for really old systems such as my 2007 Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, I find Windows 10 LTSB 2015/2016 are far more forgiving of old hardware and can be tweaked to actually use less resources then Windows 7. I also have a Dell Latitude 2120 netbook with a dual-core 1.5GHz Atom, 2GB RAM, and a 32GB SSD that was practically unusable on the modern internet with 32-bit Windows 7 Starter even with a lot of tweaking and yet with 32-bit LTSB 2015 it makes a fine bedtime internet surfing machine.
 
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70 Polara said:
Possible dumb question, since I've haven't used the actual Microsoft Media Creation tool to do anything but download ISO images, as I use Rufus to take my various Windows ISOs to USB, but is the media creation tool creating a UEFI only installation media? With Rufus you can select MBR and BIOS when creating your bootable USB so it will work on old machines that are pre UEFI..........................

Also for really old systems such as my 2007 Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, I find Windows 10 LTSB 2015/2016 are far more forgiving of old hardware and can be tweaked to actually use less resources then Windows 7.
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Forgot to mention that I tried Rufus with the MBR setting and it was the same result :/
 
Colonel Sanders said:
It's a AMD Phenom II X4 N950
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That's really odd as I'm not aware of any issues running newer Windows 10 64-bit versions on these CPUs. A friend has an old Phenom II X6 1090T system running version 1903 just fine....................

Does machine have latest BIOS? I've had issues with some Acers from that time frame that I've worked on where a BIOS update was a necessity to get Windows 8 stable back when that was all the rage...........................
 
70 Polara said:
That's really odd as I'm not aware of any issues running newer Windows 10 64-bit versions on these CPUs. A friend has an old Phenom II X6 1090T system running version 1903 just fine....................

Does machine have latest BIOS? I've had issues with some Acers from that time frame that I've worked on where a BIOS update was a necessity to get Windows 8 stable back when that was all the rage...........................
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Yeah it has the most current BIOS available.
 
Acer laptops are notorious for having weird problems. I stay away from that brand personally. I gave it a chance 4 years ago (240hz gaming display) but it failed, of course. Repair technician said the failure was due to a horrible design where the display port cables were glued on a hot power board, designed to fail from heat.
 
GotNoRice said:
Instead of doing a fresh install of Windows 10, try doing a fresh install of Windows 7 and then upgrading to 10.
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I ended up installing Windows 8.1 Pro. I then tried doing the Windows 10 upgrade but it keeps giving me some "safe_os" error when it reboots to start the actual installation process.
 
Colonel Sanders said:
I'm trying to install Windows 10 on this old Acer Aspire laptop and I'm running into problems. First thing I tried was creating a standard bootable USB drive using the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. When I try to boot from that (using either the laptop's boot options in BIOS or the F12 boot menu) I get a flashing cursor for a few moments, I see the W10 logo flash, then back to flashing cursor, then it either sits there until it reboots on its own, or I did once get a "Windows has encountered an error and needs to restart" message.

Tried creating burning an ISO to a DVD and booting from that, but no go (I think the optical drive is hosed on this laptop.) So I tried a USB external DVD drive with the disc I burned, same results as above.

Kinda throwing up my hands here as to how I can install Windows on this damn thing, lol.
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Since you won't be playing games on that older laptop, try installing Linux Mint on it. It's most likely all you need and you can forget the WIndows troubles.
 
B00nie said:
Since you won't be playing games on that older laptop, try installing Linux Mint on it. It's most likely all you need and you can forget the WIndows troubles.
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I totally would, but I need some special software that requires Windows (car tuning related.)
 
I agree with B00nie. I have Linux Mint 20 installed on a older Lenovo Thinkpad laptop. Works great especially if used a SSD as a boot device. If you need a Windows app from the past, you can install Wine and run the app from that. I have installed Office 2003 and 2007 using Wine.
 
Colonel Sanders said:
I totally would, but I need some special software that requires Windows (car tuning related.)
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I would try using that car tuning software through Wine first. If it doesn't work, then continue to fight with Windows.
 
Or solve your issues and pony up about $200 and get an HP or Dell refurb laptop with Win 10 already installed.
By this point I'm guessing you have spent at least that in time messing with it!
 
I had problems on older hardware with 3rd party USB 3.0 controllers and failing Win 10 installs. If the laptop has these, try disabling them in BIOS, and enable them after a successful install. Worked for me.
 
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