Window 10 ASUS Tablet only boots to BIOS menu

I did this to myself but I want to know if there’s anyway to recover or have I killed my tablet.

I’ve got a ASUS VivoTab Smart tablet with Windows 10 installed.

Recently it kept rolling back a big update saying I didn’t have enough space on my C: drive. I had partitioned the dive into 2 drives, a C: and D:. I planned to just increase the size of the C: drive but when I used Partition Manager it showed 4 extra Healthy Recover partitions. After doing some research I figured that they were left over from upgrades from Windows 8 to 8.1 to Windows 10. None of them were over 500 Mb which I thought one should have been 500 Mb for Windows 10. I decided to delete them one by one and then resize the last one to 500Mb so my Windows 10 would have a 500Mb Recovery Partition and then work on resizing the C: drive with extra available space on the D: drive.

Well something went wrong and now the tablet will only boot to the BIOS Menu and the only drive that is listed for Boot Option #1 is “Windows Boot Manager”.

Other ASUS users with similar booting problems have said to set:
Fast Boot = Disabled
Secure Boot = Disabled
Then install a bootable Win 10 USB drive into the tablets port and restart.

When I hit "Save and Restart". my tablet doesn’t seem to want to read the USB drive when restarted. It just reboots to the BIOS menu.

Is my tablet toast or do I have some other options?

Thanks for any suggestion in advance.

How did you create the Windows 10 installation flash drive?

I used a program called Rufus, version 2.11

Jcpstrat said:

I used a program called Rufus, version 2.11

That is most likely your problem. This is what I would do, need to use an 8GB USB flash drive.

Make USB flash drive bootable. This will erase everything on it:
Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive

At step 9, to make the flash drive compatible with both UEFI and BIOS, use the fat32 filesystem:
9. To format the partition, type format fs=fat32 quick, and then click ENTER.

At step 12, you will mount the Windows 10 ISO file and copy all the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the USB flash drive.

I like to get my Windows 10 ISO files from here:
Windows 10 ISO

I prefer to always make a combination Windows 10 installation and Kyhi Recovery Tools flash drive. Read my quote in the middle of the OP here:
Windows 10 ISO

See if the tablet will boot from a flash drive made the old fashioned (and much more reliable) way.

OK ... thanks NavyLCDR I'll give that a try. You say to use a 8GB flash drive. Do you mean 8GB or larger? I have a 15Gb drive I can try.

Jcpstrat said:

OK ... thanks NavyLCDR I'll give that a try. You say to use a 8GB flash drive. Do you mean 8GB or larger? I have a 15Gb drive I can try.

Yes, 8GB to 32GB actually. Windows/Diskpart won't format over 32GB flash drive as FAT32.

Got it ... thanks for additional info.. I'm downloading ISO right now from the site you mentioned and USB drive is ready per your great instructions.

Well NavyLCDR, I'm making progress ... it's now booting from the USB drive into the Windows Setup program but at the first screen where I have to select country etc.. I can't select anything without a keyboard. Do you know if there's a setting in BIOS that will allow me to make screen selections since the "Touch" features aren't loaded yet.

Just a little more info. to make sure I'm describing the problem I'm now faced with.

On this tablet, when I'm in BIOS mode, I can use the up and down volume controls to navigate the BIOS menu screens. I can also use the Windows Start Icon to Select. When the tablet boots from the bootable USB drive and the Windows Setup menu appears there are some selections to make i.e. Country, Time Zone and Keyboard. Those are already filled out correctly and the only other button is "Next" but none of the BIOS Mode buttons function at this point and the Touch Screen isn't available so I can't hit the "Next" button to continue.

I'm guessing I need something else on the bootable USB drive that will first load the Touch Screen code, if that is actually available. Anyone have any ideas on how to get past this so I can make the selections necessary to re-load the Windows software?