Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51 504A Black Screen on boot, attempting fix through BIOS recovery
Hey everyone.
So yes, I've run into the highly sought after black screen of death. I'll list what I've tried below:
-Connecting to external display, which did not work (using fn key and all that). Also the screen is completely off, no image showing with flashlight in dark room etc.
-the device has two RAM sticks (16gb total) which came with it. I've tried switching them and booting with only one in each slot, no luck. Tried each one on all slots, nada.
(Oddly enough, switching both ram sticks stops the pc from booting at all. It just flashes blue light indicator at the side 3 times along with keyboard LED and switches off, don't know if that's important).
- tried disconnecting the battery and reconnecting, both regular and cmos, no dice. Unseated the HDD and RAM sticks dozens of times, nothing. The SSD (where it normally boots from) I've unseated only once I think. Not eager to try anymore than that cos I'm terrified of it, unless that's necessary.
Now the fun part: BIOS recovery, using fb + esc which is the only thing that gets my fans running as opposed to windows + b. The flashes I've tried using are 1gb and 8gb, formatted to fat32.
I've gone nuts at this point. I got the latest bios update for my acer, 1.22. Ran it on another pc, got what was supposed to be a .fd file from the Temp directory (mine was iscflash.bin).
I've renamed it all sorts of ways. AA, BB, AAHW, BBHW (gotten from platform.ini within extracted exe, as platformname 1 and 2). Also changed file extension to .fd, .rom, and .bin. Used Andy's tools to get a filename but that really didn't work. NB: Most of these extensions and filename I tried all at once, I read somewhere the pc can decide what it wants. Please correct me if I'm wrong, so I can begin the absolutely marvelous grind of trying them all one at a time.
I also tried renaming to C5PRH (filename of the extracted exe from bios file), that proved a dead end as well.
Through all of this I have never even gotten telltale signs that something is happening. No beeps except when I disconnect the cable, no flashing indicators anywhere, just fans blazing away and red backlit keyboard.
Now, here are the things I HAVEN'T tried:
Factory reset: Not keen, plus I heard it didn't even fix the problem for someone else. I'm saving that for the last hail Mary shot.
Running bios stuff without ssd: again, not super excited about this, but open minded on the matter. I just figured the fn + esc bit would make the computer ditch the SSD on its own.
Repair people: where I live doesn't have many trustworthy guys. And the closest repair center for acer is about half continent away. Plus, I doubt I'd be able to afford it. Also, pride maybe?
Important thing to note, is that I had just updated windows before this party started. On Sat the 21st, windows sneakily downloaded an update and forced me to install it. I did, and the pc restarted just fine. Then I shut it down, tried to boot, and the black screen lovingly embraced me.
I think that's all the information I know to give.
In summary, I'm sad and I need help.
