Acer Aspire 5253 Bios 1.18 Update failed

I attempted to update the BIOS on my 64 bit Acer Aspire 5253 laptop to vr 1.18. I had been having fan issues and overheating and wanted to see if the BIOS update might help. After performing the update in Windows, my laptop will no longer boot. i have been trying to update using the DOS prompt, but DOS reports that FLASHIT.exe is incompatible with my Windows 7. ive about tried everything i can think of. im wondering if the Acer supplied BIOS is incompatible with my laptop if if the version of Flashit they supplies is not working with the 64 bit machine,

Any help or advicee would be appreciated! i had just put in a new hard drive and had everything running well until i decided to update the BIOS. Epic fail!!

Keith

Accepted answers

Fergdaddy

Home run!!!
OMG! Guys you won’t believe. I had tried to restore to am earlier disc image prior to performing the Bios upgrade and Windows could not restore from it. After your efforts, clean install and going to Windows tools, I performed a restore from a 2/19 disc image, and it worked!

i even got all my personal files, data and most importantly, Microsoft office applications back!

kudos all around! This was most challenging recovery I’ve ever had!

Keith

All comments

JackE

You can try to wipe it clean but I fear the BIOS may be interfering with diskpart to make any changes due to the apparent failure to clear its read-only tag. It's acting as if it were a burned DVD disk with 0GB free. But here's the diskpart commands to try to wipe it, create an MBR table & reformat. Jack E/NJ

DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk 0
DISKPART> online disk
DISKPART> attributes disk clear readonly
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> convert mbr
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select partition 1
DISKPART> active
DISKPART> format fs=ntfs quick
DISKPART> assign letter = C
DISKPART> list volume

Deejay_tech

you can try,
clean command do before installing os.

enter diskpart, select your disk #.(hdd)
1) type "clean" , without the quotes.

after clean command finishes,
you can convert your hdd to gpt type , if your bios supports it. if the machine is old and does not support GPT, as jacke has posted below, please omit step 2 and go directly to step 3.

2) type convert gpt

3) type create part primary

then exit diskpart. and install your os.

from the screenshots, it seems your boot partition is allotted drive letter "D:" and the system reserved partition is allotted drive letter C: , system reserved partition should not have any drive letter and is hidden. The boot partition should be C: letter. (generally), this is basically what Master Jacke sir was trying to do with your system.
anyways you give the clean command a shot and see what happens when you install the OS.

keep posting ...

JackE

Please Deejay_tech! Not GPT,. This is a Win7 legacy BIOS laptop. Not UEFI bootstrap. BIOS cannot boot to a GPT partition! Jack E/NJ

Deejay_tech

@ jacke sir, thats why i had written "if the bios supports it". edited my post above.
i have no way of knowing the user hardware config, as the user has not posted it.

JackE

Deejay_tech >>>i have no way of knowing the user hardware config, as the user has not posted it.>>>

Sorry. @Fergdaddy posted Aspire 5253 in the thread title. Also wrote >>>I attempted to update the BIOS on my 64 bit Acer Aspire 5253 laptop to vr 1.18>>> incompatible with my Windows 7>>>.

Jack E/NJ

Fergdaddy

I’ll keep you posted on my efforts. Won’t get a chance to try the clean and reinstall until later today.
Keith

JackE

OK. Good luck with it. I'm wondering if a BIOS supervisor password might release the HDD and allow diskpart to act upon it. Just like it did on the frozen HDD password issue. Jack E/NJ

Fergdaddy

Jack,
sounds worth a shot before I do anything more drastic!

Fergdaddy

Well, went through the clean procedure, reformatted and attempted to access Windows install to start anew.

This is what I got:

JackE

The Windows7 installation USB stick or DVD? Turn the computer off. Then turn it back on again and immediately start tapping the F12 key. It should allow you to boot from the installation media. Jack E/NJ

Fergdaddy

Jack!

check this out!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/e8/usr0owsz75vo.jpeg

JackE

That certainly looks encouraging! So far. But I really wanna see what happens after the last step has completed. So wake me up with the good news when the good news happens.

Jack E/NJ

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/am/kednatpdlh7q.jpg

Fergdaddy

Of course Microsoft rejected the very product key I was using prior to the Bios crash. Had to go through a big long phone procedure to finally activate it. The basic shell of Windows is up. I’m trying to get it to load my system image from before the Bios fiasco. Windows wasn’t wanting to use my image file and wants me to create an emergency disk and let it format my drive before it attempts to recover the image. Does that sound right??

JackE

Well yeah. It wants to put the system back to the way it was. With all the Win7 updates, personal data, programs you installed, and devoid of any malware that might try to slip through without a reformat --- it doesn't know what you have on there now is a clean install so it can't assume it's malware free. Just let it do it's thing. Worse comes to worse, you can always clean re-install and call Microsoft activation 800 number back again. Activation only took a few --- almost pain-free but very apprehensive --- minutes in the times I've had to use it.

Jack E/NJ

Fergdaddy

Jack & Deejay,

Thanks so much for all your help. Would not be at this point without you!
i reinstalled my WiFi drivers and gonna let it do Windows updates, then try to Reimage from my backups. Guess the 1.18 Bios installed correctly, it just did some very unwanted things in the process?

JackE

Congrats. Jack E/NJ

Fergdaddy

Home run!!!
OMG! Guys you won’t believe. I had tried to restore to am earlier disc image prior to performing the Bios upgrade and Windows could not restore from it. After your efforts, clean install and going to Windows tools, I performed a restore from a 2/19 disc image, and it worked!

i even got all my personal files, data and most importantly, Microsoft office applications back!

kudos all around! This was most challenging recovery I’ve ever had!

Keith

JackE

>>>I had been having fan issues and overheating and wanted to see if the BIOS update might help. >>>

Double congrats on your HR! From now on, messing with the firmware should always be the very last resort in trying to fix just about any issues especially this one. If this gets to be a problem, cleaning the dried up g oo p between the CPU and heatsink and re-pasting with a good grade heat conductor like ArcticMX4 should be tried first. Good luck. Jack E/NJ

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