How to fix "No bootable device" on an Acer Swift 7

Added 2022-04-19

2017-02-27

Initially, having installed Fedora Core 25 according to the usual procedure (for me via booting an installation DVD) and following the instructions, the system enlightened me that the harddrive was not bootable...



After a few confused moments, with the unremitting help from a very kind colleague of mine, a remedy was developed and this is what I would like to share with others in the same predicament.

Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that these instructions will result in a functioning operating system on your computer. These lines are merely intended as an effort to help when nothing else seems to work.

My installation media was to burn FC25 installation image to a DVD, but other possibilities are USB stick, network installation etc, see the Fedora pages for instructions and downloads of Fedora. Other distros have similar pages.

Upon booting from the installation media, "Install Fedora to harddrive" was chosen, the system was installed BUT it would not boot properly possibly due to that the UEFI bootloader somehow did not agree with the Fedora system.

Instead, to make linux bootable, go along the following steps:
Upon booting, ferociously hit the [F2] key as to enter the BIOS.
Go to the section Boot by using the [Right Arrow] key.
The first line on this page says "Boot mode", and this is set this to "UEFI".
Change this to "Legacy" by means of [F5] and [F6] (even though the BIOS protests).
Below, it says "Boot priority order".
Move "USB DVD" (or whatever installation media is used) to above "HDD" by means of [F5] and [F6].
Finally hit [F10] to save the changes and exit BIOS.

First choose "Start Fedora-Workstation-Live 25", then choose "Try Fedora".
From the applications menu choose Terminal (i.e. going to the left edge of the screen with the mouse pointer, an icon with nine dots - each the size of 1 mm² arranged in 3x3 grid - and from pressing this all applications are shown. Scrolling down this list there is the subgroup Utilities, and having pressed this one Terminal becomes available, so select that).
Rearrange into new partitions. (It is recommended that as much space as there is RAM is devoted to swap space; here let us assume we have 16 GB RAM on a 256 GB harddrive -- default on Acer Swift 7.)
In the terminal, become root (or sudo all commands henceforth).
In the terminal write:

#	fdisk	(Start the fdisk program for editing the partition table)
Command (m for help):	o	(Deletes all previous partitions and creates a new, empty partition table)
	n p	(Create the new partition sda1 -- root partition)
	+80G	(Space for sda1)
	t 83	(Set type for sda1 to "Linux")
	n p	(Create the new partition sda2 -- swap partition)
	+17G	(Space for sda2. Recommended size is 1.05*RAM))
	t 82	(Set type for sda2 to "Linux-Swap")
	n p	(Create the new partition sda3 -- home partition)
	<return>	(Space for sda3. Having chosen 17 GB for swap and 80 GB for root, the rest -- about 159 GB -- is for the home partition)
	t 83	(Set type for sda3 to "Linux")
	a 1	(make the root partition, sda1, bootable)

So far nothing has been done to the harddrive. The next step will. This is the "Point of no return"...

	w	(write to fstab and exit)
#	sync
#	reboot

Again choose "Start Fedora-Workstation-Live 25" and "Try Fedora".

#	dd if=/dev/zeros of=/dev/sda1 bs=1M count=1	(Hard format the new partitions)
#	dd if=/dev/zeros of=/dev/sda2 bs=1M count=1
#	dd if=/dev/zeros of=/dev/sda3 bs=1M count=1
#	mkswap /dev/sda2 -L SWAP	(Make them of proper type and label only to facilitate understanding what is what)
#	mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L ROOT
#	mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 -L HOME

Then, still booting from the DVD, after the "Start Fedora-Workstation-Live 25" routine, choose "Install to harddrive" this time and follow the instructions to install Fedora to the partitions.

Once I'd made everything work (audio, video, wifi, all software etc) I wanted a second charger (since it is cumbersome to bring one back and forth between work and home every day). To this end, after having googled "charger" and "swift 7", one of the few hits was one called Subtel from a German company. On their homepage they clearly state it is for the Acer Swift 7 (as well as some other Acer models). It does provide the less common USB C 3.1 contact and it is pictured on their homepage. As soon as I'd got it I attached it but no charging occurred. The diode on the transformer unit was shining indicating that the power cord was in order, so I suspected the cord between the transformer and the computer to be the culprit. But when I came to work next day and I attached my original charger, this one did not charge either. What possibly had happened was that the Subtel charger deliverd the wrong voltage and thus the USB C socket for charging was blown. I then sent the computer to Acer Repairs (via my vendor). Since the repair of this USB socket is done by replacing the whole motherboard the vendor told me I could be expecting a cost of repair to about 700 euro. After a few weeks of angst-ridden waiting I got it back with the comment from Acer that I shouldn't pay anything; the whole thing was paid by my guarantee. And in addition they sent me an extra original charger. Then it was just to start all over with the entire installation process again... ;)

Having recovered from this traumatic event I would like to issue a word of warning:

Do NOT buy the Subtel charger for the Acer Swift 7

-- it doesn't do the work. And it destroys your computer. (Or rather it destroys the USB socket, but without being able to charge your battery or run the computer on direct power feed, it will not work.)

Happy linuxing!!