Hey fedizens  

We had a bit of a mare yesterday, as wife's brand new laptop (an Acer Aspire A16-61M (NX.JP0EK.005)), which she got as a gift from family during recent sales, decided to suddenly crash in an awful manner after only a month of usage.

The laptop crashed in Windows (Win 11 Home, 25H2 with all AI tools removed) with an error message of some kind, rebooted, and then reported "no bootable device".

We spent a huge chunk of the day researching the issue, trying various supposed fixes, and failing miserably 

Our failure led to us having a neurospicy meltdown in the evening 😔 As such, we're asking for your advice on attempting to fix it ASAP for wife  

Wife has raised a ticket with Acer in case they're able to help, but we're hoping folks here will suggest something other than wiping the drive and reinstalling an OS.

Things we tried included:

• Verifying that the SSD itself still showed in the UEFI/BIOS.
• Resetting the UEFI to default.
  • We cannot change to the boot mode to Legacy then back to UEFI, as some generic-advice-giving folks have suggested in Acer forums and elsewhere.
• Using Windows PE to access the command line tools, as well as variants based on it, like:
  • Aomei Partition Assistant's bootable media.
  • Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8).
• Using Windows 11 installation media (from their latest media creation tool) to access the troubleshooting repair tools.

The efforts thus far have only changed the error from not "no bootable device" to immediate blue screen messages showing a failure a load and presenting options (function key options like startup repair etc.) which all fail to work.

The main C: partition appears to be borked, and shows as unallocated.

We've tried to recover the partitions and the data, as well as clone the drive sector by sector, without success. As far as we know, Bitlocker hadn't been enabled, but one attempt to recover files under a tool within Hiren's BootCD PE asked for a pin when trying to recover files from the lost partition showing as unallocated space, so it may well be hindering any recovery efforts.

Due to life struggles, neither wife nor us had had the time to set up any backup services yet, and whilst most things are cloud saved and can be recovered, some files and all the custom settings and tools would be lost if we cannot recover the drive fully 😔

Apologies in advance if we advise we've tried something already, and please be kind and detailed with any comments or queries.

For context, we've 20+ years of troubleshooting Windows and hardware issues, but we're neither a programmer nor IT specialist of any kind, and have never had an IT-type job.

Any thoughtful ideas, suggestions, and recommendations will be most welcome 🩷

#AskFedi #TechSupport #Windows #Windows11 #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #troubleshooting #DataRecovery #DriveRecovery #Acer #NoBootableDevice

Update: After further troubleshooting, the issue appears to be that some crash broke the drive's partition table, and software couldn't recover all the partitions because BitLocker was enabled by default 🤦‍♀️ Fortunately wife was using her Microsoft account and the recovery key auto-synced to her account. Now just trying to find a bit of software other than DiskGenius (which is bleeping expensive) which can accept the BitLocker recovery key and rebuild the drive without having to back it up and restore it.

Further update: After a few days of working on this whenever we could around other things, and learning more about WindowsPE, WindowsRE, device encryption being enabled by default, bcdedit, manage-bcd, repair-bcd, bcdboot, various shite recovery tools that everybody claims are great but aren't at all, we finally ended up getting the device back into a semi-working state and told it to hold off on updates for the next 20 years. In the meantime, wife can use laptop again at least and we can fix the many other bugs again manually, via an in-place install, or properly backing up, nuking everything, and starting from scratch. On the plus side, we discovered that Rufus (the formatting tool) has options to download and customise Windows installations, including automatic disabling device encryption. Also had to play around a little with Linux Mint. We could get used to that, but we'd to find equivalents for WIndows mods and functions we're used to. Oh, and having to decrypt an encrypted unallocated (raw) partition, even where you have the recovery key, is one of the most cursed problems we've ever come across! Windows will allow you to assign a drive letter without formatting, but you can only decrypt it to elsewhere then: not in-place. Most recovery tools simply lack the simple ability to let you enter a recovery key or password and restore it in place.

Hi fedi folks  

We have another linquistic query, aimed ideally at fluent/native English and German speakers.

We're aware of the word Schadenfreude, in the English sense of deriving joy or pleasure from somebody else's misfortune.

However, we're not aware of a suitable word to express the intense pain, anguish and despair of somebody else getting something that you cannot get.

Every time we try to find a suitable word, all we typically find suggested are envy or Missgunst.

The problem is that these words don't fit what we're looking for.

For the word we're seeking, it's not envy, as there's no resentment of what others have or can get, nor is there any malice towards them for this.

Instead, it's more like a deep pain and sadness of not being able to get what you need when others can.

It's the kind of negative feeling that can cause you to withdraw from people who are sharing their joy and successes, or even to withdraw from entire spaces where these are highlighted.

We watched Natalie Wynn's (ContraPoints') long video on envy years back, which we misremembered as being much clearer on the topic, but looking back over the transcript for it didn't help us at all. In fact, it made us more confused  

We've had the same problem before with not finding suitable words, such as the pain of being misunderstood, a true-neutral replacement for the verb to hope, or the inability to experience hope.

#AskFedi #linguistics #language #words #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #English #German

Hey folks  

Bit of an odd practical biochemistry question in relation to the absorption speed of any meds.

Hypothetically-speaking, is it possible to turn an instant release (IR) med into an extended-release¹ (ER) version via non-commercial means?

Examples of IR meds might include:

• A capsule (designed to dissolve in the stomach) containing an easily-absorbed powder.
• A tablet without any coating and a structure that dissolves very easily.

Examples of ER meds we've seen include:

• Capsules containing tiny pellets, coated with something to slow absorption.
• Tablets with a coating designed to slow absorption.

Could you, for example:

• Encase the capsule in a larger, acid-resistant / enteric capsule?
  • e.g., like the ones described here
• Coat the tablet in some kind of food-safe coating?

Genuinely asking here, as we neither have the spoons nor time to go down an AuDHD rabbit hole investigating this 😅

#biochemistry #AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease

¹ aka prolonged, sustained, modified, or controlled release

Hey all  

We had another linguistic thought.

(You can see our previous linguistic queries on looking for words for the pain of being misunderstood and finding an alternative word for hope.)

We realised that English has a specific word for the inability to experience pleasure from activities you'd usually enjoy: anhedonia.

However, it doesn't seem like there's an equivalent official word for the inability to experience hope.

Instead, there are only words like hopeless or hopelessness, but those words do not really suggest that the person can no longer derive hope from situations they'd normally expect to.

Following the same logic as the above, we think it would be something like an- plus either elpĭ́s or elpída.

So, we think it'd be either anelpis or anelpida.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Corrections?

#AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #English #linguistics #hope #hopeless #hopelessness #anelpis #anelpida

Random tech question, especially for audiophiles, or anybody who listens a lot to music.

What affordable (<=£50 GBP)¹ options exist in the UK for:

• Taking sound input from a sound card via a 3.5 mm audio cable or optical cable output;
• Transmitting the sound to paired bluetooth headphones; ...

... and which has a volume control option (ideally analogue, or otherwise at least 100 volume steps)?

We have bluetooth headphones (Sony WH-1000XM4), but only presently use the bluetooth connection (using LDAC) when listening to music on our phone.

When we're at our PC, we've been using a 3.5 mm output from our speakers. We got those speakers back when we used to listen to music occasionally out loud, but we don't ever do that any more: we only listen via headphones, so the speakers are entirely redundant.

We'd like to be able to connect our headphones quickly to the PC with an analogue volume control, like the one we have on our current speakers.

In case it's relevant, we have a Sound Blaster Z sound card.

Boosts and quotes appreciated, if you think it'll help  

Please remember we're in the UK and looking to get something on a budget.

#AskFedi #tech #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #audio #audiophile

Edit 2026-03-30:
We returned to having a look after a pause. There are Bluetooth transmitters that can take multiple inputs (analogue or digital) from a sound card or other source to Bluetooth headphones or other devices, and which have volume control on the transmitter. However, the price-entry point for getting LDAC support exceeds our price range, and the price range for even getting a volume knob increases it even further. Even there, we'd be looking at something like a 1Mii DS700 (~£100 GBP), but that still uses digital volume steps 🤦‍♀️ In fact, even more expensive products like the Fiio BTA30 Pro still use digital volume steps, just with better underlying hardware  In short, no Bluetooth device meets our needs, so we expect we'll replace our redundant speakers with a 3.5 mm analogue volume controller and stick with wired for now... and possibly add some kind of 3.5 mm to LDAC transmitter adapter at some point later.

¹ This is the ideal price range, but if there's some longer-term better solution, perhaps involving a replacement PCI-E sound card that has a native option for this, or some device that might also help with future streaming stuff, if we can ever return to it, we're willing to consider the options presented. Anything beyond £100 GBP will be pushing it though, unless it's a perfect, long-term solution with multiple features.