[Q] Can't enter bootloader, tried many different ways. topic

So my sister-in-law has an Acer Iconia A1-810 tablet, somehow it crashed and she used "Power+volume up" to enter the bootloader and start a recovery, or maybe erase, I really don't know what she selected, but now all the tablet will do is turn on and go strait to a screen with the android with the spinning stomach and says "Erasing..." but it stays on this screen for hours and hours and does nothing.

I have a bit of experience with androids and lots of experience in software/hardware development but I can not get this thing to do anything. I have used the little paperclip shutdown hole to turn it off and then tried to get back in to the bootloader with "power + volume up" (tried volume down too, along with both volume buttons) and that wont work, still goes strait in to the "Erasing..." screen. I have tried with adb and fastboot to interupt the boot process and get it to do anything, it won't. When you do something with fastboot, it will say "waiting for device" so I restart the tablet, and when the tablet first starts to boot, during the Acer logo screen, fastboots cursur stops blinking but won't go any further.

As far as I can tell, nothing I do will get me to the bootloader again, now it just goes to the "Erasing..." screen everytime and ignores everything else you try to do. Is there anything that can be done? Or is this thing just a paperweight now? I'm about ready to start pulling this thing apart and seeing if I can do anything at the hardware level....