Aspire E1-510 stops booting before bios - black screen - unable to flash bios

jenciso
jenciso Member Posts: 3 New User

Hi

Have an Acer Aspire E1-510-2483. It started to have some trouble to boot sporadically, and now it won't boot anyway.

The sequence after I press power button is:

-power light starts

-fan starts

-cd clicks

-hdd light blinks

-hdd light stops

-fan stops

-power light stops

then again same procedure repeat once again

then nothing.

 

The screen is totally black,  no light. No bios boot. Nothing

 

I've tried to pull out hdd, pull out RAM memory, same thing.

Pulled out battery. Power reset as Acer suggest. Have power cord plugged with no battery.

 

I've tried to flash bios. Downloaded latest bios from acer site. Put files unzipped on flahs drive (tried formatted as fat and then as fat32)

With no battery (and no hdd), pressed FN and ESC, then connected power cord, then pressed power button.

Fan starts full speed, hdd light starts, usb flash drive light (kingston with internal light) flashes twice... then nothing changes. Left it on for 30 min. Nothing. Fan full speed all the time.

 

Tried to unarchive every exe file and put all files on flash drive. Same thing.

 

Tried to put freedos on flash drive togehter with unzipped bios update (with unetbootin) but no change.

 

So, am asking if there is anything else to try?

Is this the correct way to update bios on a non-booting notebook? Or should I make the flash drive bootable? (the computer "starts" with FN+ESC, but still no boot even with hdd plugged in.

 

Found a lot of suggestion with ZGIA32.zip but cant find the file anywhere, nor any suggestion that has to do with this model (E1-510)

 

Any suggestion?

thanks a lot

/javier

 

PD: Acer support refused because warranty run out....

 

 

Answers

  • Sharanji
    Sharanji ACE Posts: 4,328 Pathfinder

    This seems to be an issue with internal hardware and you may contact Acer repair center to fix the issue.

    Here's the weblink of Acer  repair center Acer repair centers

    You select your country name from the drop down menu and you will get details of repair center in Uruguay.

     

     

    Click the Kudos kudos-thumbs-up.pngto say “Thanks” for helping! select "Accept Solution" if your issue is resovled.

  • jenciso
    jenciso Member Posts: 3 New User

    @Sharanji, thanks for the suggestion...

     

    Still, I would rather have a direct answer to:

    what is the procedure to flash bios from usb pen drive, while unable to boot into bios?

     

    Is it enough to put bios files (uncompressing exe files with 7zip) into fat 32 or fat formatted pen drive, then starting with FN+ESC key pressed?

    Should that update bios automagically?

     

    Or should I first rename som files or download freedos to the flash drive also?

     

    Thanks again though! I'll try to reach repair center tuesday morning

    /best

    /javier

  • TonyB58
    TonyB58 Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Hi Jenciso

     

    I had (HAVE) a similar issue with my AO533, it fails to boot into anything except in SAFE mode.

    My first thought was that the BIOS was corrupt so I downloaded my BIOS from Acer and tried to follow their confusing instructions. No flashing power light or anything whatever keys I pressed.

     

    When I contacted Acer twice, same reply "it's a hardware problem" send it in for repair.

     

    I tried running the BIOS update in Windows (in SAFE mode) and both the Windows and the DOS installations failed. Then I tried booting up from a Falcon Four boot DVD (YES - my "hardware failed" PC can run Mini XP or Linux with no problem when I boot from a DVD, or indeed Win 7 in SAFE mode) anyhow I booted up with FREE DOS and run the FLASH.BAT file I had downloaded from ACER. That updated my BIOS from 1.02 to 1.17.

    IMG_20151031_083015BIOS.jpg

     

    Unfortunatelly that did not solve my problem!

     

    It looks like my BCD (part of the boot procedures I think) have become corrupt and I just cannot fix them, not even with a Factory Restore from the HDD PQSERVICE partition. When i look in there the BCD files have ALSO been changed, I believe when I tried to fix them with a Windows 7 recovery DVD.

     

    I have tried:

    • To repair / rebuild the boot files - still only boots in safe mode.
    • Both recovery options, they fail as after a reboot the laptop will ONLY boot in SAFE mode and the recovery services fail to run (brilliant system ACER).
    • I then tried to install Windows 7 and 10 from DVD and that also fails (I had so many errors I forget why).

     

    It appears that my boot (BCD?) files on the System Reserved and PQSERVICE partitions were changed and now do not work. How do I get the original ones back when the recovery procedure does not seem to do it and why does Acer allow them to be overwritten on the "secure" partition.

     

    Anyhow I hope that you can use FREE DOS to update your BIOS and I think I will raise my own discussion on this site. Hopefully someone can email me the original boot files from their AO533.

     

    Good luck.

     

    Tony

     

     

  • jenciso
    jenciso Member Posts: 3 New User

    @Tony  Thanks for the reply!

    I still believe this isn't my case, cause I can't even boot into anything! the notebook doesn't reach BIOS boot, even less to a windows boot (or freedos or linux on a pendrive... I've tested both).

     

    So in my case it could be hw failure, or some kind of corruption somewhere BEFORE bios initialices (which I believe is hw, but maybe it depends on some internal battery or something...?)

     

    Two times I've succesfully booted windows 7, but after that it fails again when I reboot (can't reproduce the situation when it boots / fails! ir feels totally spontaneous...)

     

    thanks again, and if anyone has some other idea, please post!

    (any spell or black magic will be rewarded!...)

     

    best

    /j

  • mingo1
    mingo1 Member Posts: 7 New User

    Hi Jenciso,

     

    I'm experiencing a similar problem, but with the Aspire 5600U All-in-One. You can check my post here to see the troubleshooting steps that I have done. Maybe one of them will work for you!

     

    Regards,

    Mingo1