Installed firmware update on Acer Aspire TC-885 UA91 to R-01 C3, Slow Boot, Warnings etc

WarrenHawk1975

Hi to all!

I'm new and really may have gotten myself into potentially serious trouble. I will apologize in advance for my ignorance pertaining to my lack of knowledge about the strange happenings on my computer and other absurdities. I have an Acer desktop (model etc listed in heading) that I bought 18 months ago. It has been pretty great compared to what I've had in the past. I've attached text files with info about a warning I get a lot since 4-29 and all the specs of the machine. Here is OS info :

Edition    Windows 10 Home
Version    20H2
Installed on    ‎2/‎27/‎2021
OS build    19042.928
Experience    Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.551.0

Everything went a bit crazy with this late Feb 2021 update. Had to update or rollback many drivers and it acted strange. I paid for a newer "windows repair program" after a friend recommended it and was amazed at all the issues and malware it found and actually did repair (in spite of paying for one of these so called better anti-virus programs that obviously barely does anything except take my money). It ran smooth for a month with no errors or warnings and even my old MBox2 interface (as my sound card) worked better than ever. Well, the Intel driver update thing kept showing 4 drivers it said I needed to download ASAP. I honestly avoided it for a while but figured I would go ahead and do it soon. But when I came home from work the other night, 2 of these drivers/firmware were somehow installed automatically. I'm not sure if it was a setting change or what because I have everything set to download but NOT INSTALL until I do it myself. When I woke the computer after getting home it was a black screen with various things listed (I can't recall them all and didn't think to capture a screenshot). What I do remember is it said system error, main drive detected, cmos issues (not sure exact wording on that), and default settings applied. At the end it gave an option to enter bios settings or continue. I continued because I didn't know what had happened. It took a minute but did boot up, no drive problems, and the system has worked fair since but lots of warnings and errors. There's a few things in device manager that say "update this driver". I'm not even sure what all this means but I remember before this update/change lots of drivers saying stuff like ACI, OEM, or ACPI, RST etc. Seems a little bit of that stuff remains but many drivers were changed and I'm guessing, as it said, default settings were loaded changing everything that had been done over 18 months. My computer info speaks endlessly about Rapid Storage/RAID but I don't seem to even have it because once I pulled up some console in an attempt to learn about it and it implied technically I should have it but don't because of the processor or some such hardware. Not knowing much about computers, I rarely mess with stuff except audio stuff as I do a ton of processing, recording, mixing, etc.....but even then, all I've done lately is find drivers for the old mbox2 I use. It had some trouble at first and needed a firmware update, though old, but I was able to do that on my old laptop running Windows 7. But it's been all good for a month. I didn't even realize the firmware update from 4-29 was the bios. I've read lots since then about various changes that need to be done in the bios like clearing old files, changing a few bios settings but though I've read about many similar situations I don't think I saw anything about mine. Clearly after looking at the info provided from System Support Utility there are problems like how much memory is being used (like 25% of what I have) and processor problems. I'm seriously praying that I fix this.

I forgot I had downloaded Macrium Reflect last month. I didn't have another hard drive or anything to make a complete backup and apparently my 8GB flash drive wasn't big enough to make a backup of the OS. However I did make a Windows recovery disc but it's just a CD so it's only maybe 660 MB or less but could this help? I'd made a system restore point the day before this happened (and often since the initial Windows update that messed up some stuff) but I guess the update to the bios can't be fixed by that. I'm just not real knowledgeable. I don't understand why many of the companies that make this stuff and hand out updates give such little to no info about them and new drivers....AND how badly you need them, but nothing about why or even exactly what it is. I wish I had endless time to spend online researching every update, driver, firmware and possible conflicts that might result in a situation like what I'm in now. Guess I should take some time off......

Pardon my frustration and being so long winded but I wanted to give as much info as I could. Let me know if I need to include more info. Any help at all or suggestions would be so greatly appreciated. Have a great night!

Accepted answers

All comments

ttttt

@WarrenHawk1975

Were you able to see the Acer Logo screen at bootup?

I bought the same model about 13 months ago. It seemed to me that you have the system repair disc but not the system image backup, but it doesn't matter, you still can try something.

First of all, when the PC is up and running , backup all your data to a high capacity USB flash drive or an external hard disk drive , in case of problems you still can keep your data.

Here we are talking about restoring your PC to the factory condition:

When bootup, while the screen is still black and before the single beep, hold down the ALT key, and continue to hit the F10 key three times a second ( if you are still using the original Acer keyboard , you may need to hold down ALT+ Fn keys then hit the F10 key) until you see a Recovery Menu ( or you see "Please Wait").

Troubleshoot->Reset This PC

You will be given the options to Keep My Files or Remove Everything, pick your choice and follow instructions.

If you pick Remove Everything, then you should have the PC like you first got it, but I don't know whether you will get the original R01-B4 04/09/2019 BIOS or the latest R01-C3 04/08/2020 version after the reset.

Note: I would suggest you to get at least one external USB HDD for future data backup and system image backup purposes. 8GB
flash drive is just too small nowadays. I even use 256GB flash drive to boot Linux through USB 3.0 /USB3.1 port. A 2TB
USB external HDD is selling around $60-$80.

WarrenHawk1975

I've been attempting to learn exactly what has happened the last 5 hours and maybe there's hope. I forgot Reflect partitioned and (I guess ) created a boot recovery or somethinng that is allowing the computer to boot up and run but not the way it usually does with the main partition of C drive. Guess I'm lucky I can still access it. I still have that windows recovery disc Reflect made which I think has all the drivers and everything on it. I'm just not sure how to proceed though I hopefully have the tools to do so. My bios firmware is R-01 C-3 (Update was 5.35.12.30) which is UEFI and not compatible with my previous bios which I guess is ACPI or ME? I'm so clueless but I'm trying my best to figure it out. Just not sure if I need to copy the WIN and ROM folders and follow that prodecure, insert the recovery disc and change the bios settings or boot order/method BECAUSE the firmware update is already done and I'm not sure if this is even possible. I'm just to afraid to do anything else on my own without a little advice to put me in the right direction. The advice I've seen in the community and other places online vary with some implying this will be easy and I'm good and others indicating I'll have to go through an extremely difficult process to even potentially fix this. I'll keep looking and researching tomorrow before and after work. I'm grateful for any help at all but all good.

ttttt

@WarrenHawk1975

I have never done a PC reset with my TC-885-UA91.

Usually a firmware update fix some bugs or improving performance of a PC, R01 C3 just works fine with mine. Hopefully the Reflect restore disc won't carry the bad drivers for your problems.

Maybe other people did the PC reset can tell you their experiences.

Good Luck!

WarrenHawk1975

ttttt said:

@WarrenHawk1975

I have never done a PC reset with my TC-885-UA91.

Usually a firmware update fix some bugs or improving performance of a PC, R01 C3 just works fine with mine. Hopefully the Reflect restore disc won't carry the bad drivers for your problems.

Maybe other people did the PC reset can tell you their experiences.

Good Luck!

Thanks for your reply. I very much appreciate it. I think my SSD boot drive is fine and the firmware update is okay..... it's just that my system wasn't exactly ready for the update yet. I think? After the firmware update the black screen said CMOS checksum error or something like that. It was be odd for the battery to be bad or any damage there because the computer isn't that old. It loaded default settings automatically (it said this right under the cmos checksum error) and gave me the options of entering the bios menu or continuing SO I continued.

Everything is working but it must be reading the OS from the partitioned C Drive Reflect made. Or I think it is. It loaded default settings and my system support utility info shows a ton of "not available" under drivers and various things. There's 2-3 ACPI devices/controllers/etc that seem to have no drivers at the moment and what does have been changed to literally whatever the system can find to operate. I'm glad it is but with errors and warnings, something isn't quite right. I'm ok if settings have been lost or if I'm lucky the recovery disc may allow me to restore but even if so, these settings were never used or setup using UEFI, only ACPI. I've read way too much about this tonight/this morning that indicated I needed to delete or copy setting files/folders to somewhere else on the drive so the UEFI bios would see it.

It's frustrating feeling so helpless but it's been a while since I've done this kind of stuff myself and technology improves quickly. Me = not so much! Perhaps all will run fine with the recovery disc but I just feel sure I'm missing a step or five that should have been done before installing the UEFI firmware. It's even more frustrating this installed automatically when I was at work. I've never had that kind of "update" happen without me choosing to install manually myself.

I do kindly appreciate your response and good wishes. It means a lot. Take care.

WarrenHawk1975

ttttt said:

@WarrenHawk1975

Were you able to see the Acer Logo screen at bootup?

I bought the same model about 13 months ago. It seemed to me that you have the system repair disc but not the system image backup, but it doesn't matter, you still can try something.

First of all, when the PC is up and running , backup all your data to a high capacity USB flash drive or an external hard disk drive , in case of problems you still can keep your data.

Here we are talking about restoring your PC to the factory condition:

When bootup, while the screen is still black and before the single beep, hold down the ALT key, and continue to hit the F10 key three times a second ( if you are still using the original Acer keyboard , you may need to hold down ALT+ Fn keys then hit the F10 key) until you see a Recovery Menu ( or you see "Please Wait").

Troubleshoot->Reset This PC

You will be given the options to Keep My Files or Remove Everything, pick your choice and follow instructions.

If you pick Remove Everything, then you should have the PC like you first got it, but I don't know whether you will get the original R01-B4 04/09/2019 BIOS or the latest R01-C3 04/08/2020 version after the reset.

Note: I would suggest you to get at least one external USB HDD for future data backup and system image backup purposes. 8GB
flash drive is just too small nowadays. I even use 256GB flash drive to boot Linux through USB 3.0 /USB3.1 port. A 2TB
USB external HDD is selling around $60-$80.

I'm sorry but I somehow missed your first post here. I appreciate your advice and it all makes sense for sure. I'm going to get a big flash drive and another HD this weekend and back it up so hopefully it will last until then. I do want to try some things before a full reinstall. It's just running everything fine right now but memory shows like 3g available and it should be near 8. This is why I think it's running the OS from the partition backup on my C Drive. Is this possible? My SSD seems fine and Windows 10 is running fine but errors, warnings etc. How reliable is the "Windows Reset"? I considered that after the Feb Windows update that messed some stuff up pretty bad but never did. I'm just unsure that anything will change the bios firmware update at this point. I'm good with the UEFI but something something isn't quite right. Thanks again as I've already taken up too much of your time already. Take care.

billsey

The issue might have been a reset, putting everything back to where it was originally which means you will need to do all the updates you had already done again. It's tough to tell for sure since we don't know the actual errors that gave those first symptoms. If I were to make a guess I'd guess that the initial error was an issue with the EFI partition not being quite right, so it booted you into recovery instead of the normal Windows boot. When you did the recovery it took you back to the original defaults that Acer had on the system. You mentioned having to reinstall drivers for the MBox2, were your video/audio apps still installed or did you have to reinstall those as well? If it had done the full recovery your apps would have gone away as well as data stored on the system. If your apps were still there and your data was still there, then it didn't do the full Acer recovery.

After you have had a chance to back everything up to an external drive, go in to Windows update and have it do everything that is available. It might take more than one run through to get everything. Make sure in Advanced Settings for the updates that you have it turned on for updating other Microsoft products at the same time. Once those are all up to date do a full power cycle (shut down,the turn the power on and let it boot fully) and start working with your normal tasks. Use your phone camera to capture any errors that pop up and report back here with what you are seeing...

WarrenHawk1975

billsey said:

The issue might have been a reset, putting everything back to where it was originally which means you will need to do all the updates you had already done again. It's tough to tell for sure since we don't know the actual errors that gave those first symptoms. If I were to make a guess I'd guess that the initial error was an issue with the EFI partition not being quite right, so it booted you into recovery instead of the normal Windows boot. When you did the recovery it took you back to the original defaults that Acer had on the system. You mentioned having to reinstall drivers for the MBox2, were your video/audio apps still installed or did you have to reinstall those as well? If it had done the full recovery your apps would have gone away as well as data stored on the system. If your apps were still there and your data was still there, then it didn't do the full Acer recovery.
After you have had a chance to back everything up to an external drive, go in to Windows update and have it do everything that is available. It might take more than one run through to get everything. Make sure in Advanced Settings for the updates that you have it turned on for updating other Microsoft products at the same time. Once those are all up to date do a full power cycle (shut down,the turn the power on and let it boot fully) and start working with your normal tasks. Use your phone camera to capture any errors that pop up and report back here with what you are seeing...

Hi Billsey! I so much appreciate your reply and helpful knowledge. I can't help but feel the need to apologize in advance for my lack of understanding regarding this problem I have. I've been up near all night the last 2 nights researching and still don't find anyone with the exact same issue as me, though TONS of others seem to be having similar issues with the most common being blue screen and no boot at all.

Not sure what you meant by "Issue might have been reset". No question the default settings were loaded. This firmware update that Intel incessantly nagged me about for months was installed somehow for some reason I still remain baffled by. After the install there was a black screen with various stuff on it like that it saw all my drives and other general info and finally something about CMOS checksum error so normal boot isn't possible. It listed 2 options : load default settings and continue or go to bios menu to make changes. I'm just not knowledgeable enough to make changes without a guide or tutorial so I chose the first option. So maybe it booted into recovery mode but I have never told it to do any kind of recovery myself. I thought all of this happened because the firmware updated to UEFI and my system is clearly ACPI or AHCI or whatever. I've read this is possible to take but not before making various changes to the system, moving boot files etc etc. I've studied device manager and other things I'm able to access and it has to be booting from the partition on C Drive where Reflect created a windows recovery folder. I made a CD that says Windows Recovery also created by MR at the same time so I'm assuming it's the same thing that's on the partition....because it fits on a CD and can't be that much info or much more than enough to boot. The bios does see my C Drive but won't boot from it, only the partition. So correct me if needed (because I am probably wrong) but the boot recovery MR created is my original ACPI type system bios which is what my computer is.....and boot isn't possible from the main partition because of the UEFI firmware update. I came to this conclusion based on everything I've read.

So I have a few questions if you have any time to answer if at all possible. With this issue, is it even possible to correct this as in make my PC compliant to work or boot properly with the UEFI bios even with devices like devices like ACPI controller, Intel(R) 300 Series Chipset Family LPC Controller (B360 A308)?? In device manager the latter Controller says things like PCI requires reserved memory region (maybe why I seem to only be able to confirm 40% of my actual memory is useable??) - Needs ISAPNP Drv, - PCI to ISA Bridge....in the driver details section. I've noticed a few listings have no drivers at all installed.

I just noticed Windows apparently did yet another update today while I was at work. Most things in device manager are slightly different with Storage Controllers, my SSD, and Processor having SCSI as enumerator and listing bios device as SB.PC10.SATO. One of the only items NOT changed is of course the firmware that remains the new UEFI R01-C3. It seems like the computer is desperately searching for what it needs everywhere it's able but the one thing that can't be changed is the ever powerful and almighty, crucially and incessantly important R01-C3 firmware update (at least according to Intel). And I see Intel's latest drivers from today have a date of manufacture before Woodstock took place and before I was even born. Yea, I know....it's some historically significant date for them, but still....

Ok, my 2nd question is : Recently I downloaded/bought this Restoro software to "fix" problems with my old Laptop running Windows 7 (which is 10 years old and seems to run better than my 18 month old desktop). Restoro actually was amazing and repaired more issues than I've ever seen. It doesn't restore or deal much with apps or viruses pertaining to apps but it actually fully repairs Windows to perfect working and running condition by either replacing missing files/drivers, repairing them or inserting newer or more compatible ones with a result of a tested fully functional OS. I was so blown away I bought another license for this desktop. I ran it once and after, it booted up a bit faster than normal and device manager showed names and labels for all devices that had been lost, ruined or corrupted by the Feb Windows update. This was end of March. It ran great for nearly a month until Intel did what Windows had done the month before, possibly worse. Sorry....MY QUESTION was that I considered running Restoro to get drivers and OS in decent order to see if anything changed. Would you do this? I've been hesitant to do anything for fear of eventual access to nothing. Windows updates 3x a day as of late so I keep expecting blue screen or something of the like at any time. My car died on saturday morning so I haven't even been able to go buy a drive! Unreal. But I have one on the way from Amazon and I have a ride tomorrow and will pickup another. With my luck, I need to have 5-6 new ones around at all times ready and waiting. I apologize for my cynical outlook but it's been frustrating to have your OS so sick due to installs/recommendations from who makes this stuff work.

3rd and final question : How much do you know about Windows Fix or Repair? Like the option listed in Windows update that says it keeps your data but reinstalls windows. Just curious if it does actually keep data. Again I am normally not so deflated but i'm having difficulty trusting these companies/manufacturers after the last 2 months but also because of numerous problems in the last 6 years that seem to happen more often than not. It's strange because before that I never had one issue with them. But my last 3 computers have all had near deaths (one actual) due to incorrect but ever insisting recommendations by Intel, Windows etc.

One last thing....@ttttt and countless others have said they have my exact desktop, downloaded the firmware and they had no such problems. Did I do something wrong? I was completely up to date on everything from windows and had only not done the firmware and one other update Intel said I needed on both times occasions when things went south on my machine. I've not replaced any hardware at all or done any modding or things that could cause problems....with the exception of just adding the mbox as my soundcard (external usb). It was the audio drivers that had issues in the Feb update. Realtek changed or rolled back drivers 6-7 times and never seemed to settle for a few weeks and I got fed up and disabled it and found the old mbox. There were only maybe 2 errors with the mbox and after Restoro ran, it worked and ran beautifully and I've not even thought about Realtek since. I did uninstall every driver from them I could find relating to audio but I think they insisted on reinstalling at one point but it didn't affect the mbox or create major issues....this was maybe a few weeks ago.

Thanks for putting up with me and totally understand if you don't even make it through all of my rambling on. I do appreciate your response and for your time regardless.

Take care.

billsey

After the install there was a black screen with various stuff on it like that it saw all my drives and other general info and finally something about CMOS checksum error so normal boot isn't possible. It listed 2 options : load default settings and continue or go to bios menu to make changes.

Those symptoms are normal for a failed CMOS battery but typically don't break the rest of the system, except that everything might have the wrong date. The defaults are often 1-1-1970 for the date when the CMOS battery has gone south. Just replace that battery (it's typically a standard 2032 coin cell), go to the BIOS and use F9 to set defaults, manually change the date and time to something close to correct (the OS will get it more exact later), then use the F10 to save and exit.

You are getting a number of acronyms confused... AHCI is a disk data transfer mode, as if Intel RST, and has really nothing to do with the boot type. UEFI and Legacy are the two boot types and of those Legacy hasn't been used since Windows 7 days. Your TC-885 has always had Windows 10 and has always booted in UEFI mode. Your drive likely has four partitions on it, one large one (the C: drive) and three smaller (EFI partition, around 100MB; Recovery partition, around 500MB, and Recovery Image partition around a few GB). Normally you only see the C: drive out of those, the rest are hidden.

The firmware that was likely installed was to the EFI partition and included security updates from Intel to help keep your system from being vulnerable to some types of malware. What is supposed to happen there is they update the EFI partition and at the same time tell the BIOS that this new stuff is OK. If the new stuff is not marked OK the BIOS will not load it to get the system fully booted without disabling Secure Boot in the BIOS. The symptoms for that type of error is usually a message about not boot disk.

If you are booting into Windows without those errors then the firmware update was successful and there are other things going on. The Restoro package isn't typically considered a wise choice, packages like that tend to tell you that you have more problems than you really do, and in some cases create problems that they can then fix for you. It's all targeted at getting to to keep on purchasing updates to the software.

As to using the builtin tools to fix or repair Windows... Sometimes they are very useful, sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth. If you have added a bunch of third party tools, things like Quickbooks or Acrobat or such non-Microsoft applications, you will likely have to reinstall them after a Refresh or Reset. That's because MS doesn't want to figure out how to do a refresh or reset that keeps those programs active, so they are just shunted into a Windows.old directory and disabled. The Refresh and Reset works best when you are just using Microsoft products.

WarrenHawk1975

@billsey
Man I so appreciate you sharing all this info with me. You're absolutely right that Ive been confused by the whole thing. I just don't know enough to accurately explain what is happening but I think what you have said here is the best I could have gotten. The computer took another update Monday and actually did seem to clear some things up with another set of odd drivers I've never seen. I'm surprised the mbox is working at all since only 2 drivers work with W10, both 8 years old. In fact it lists that driver being from 2019 but when I checked details it said no driver was installed. It was playing audio beautifully as usual though. I'll just likely do a full reinstall once i get everything i need off c drive that i need.

I think the update back at the end of February is what started this whole thing because it got weird. In spite of having little to no understanding about them, I actually work on multiple computers every single day. The various recording software had learning curves but anything that involves music, I'll figure it out. Maybe the worst issue was the the Realtek audio drivers that you mentioned. I just don't like that card....I must have at least 24bit processing for playing AND recording. The MBox (driverless still) fixes that but it's old and I'll look for another.

I guess what's weird to me is the CMOS error after the firmware update. At no time ever has the clock, date etc been off. I've never gotten the blue screen saying it could not boot with the current settings so I chose to load default settings instead of going into the BIOS. I asked a lot of questions because I'm clueless and the very reason I don't tend to do things on a computer I'm not familiar enough with to change. Probably the one decent conclusion I've come too! I saw 3 partitions on C drive before I left on Monday and before I was only seeing the boot partition or recovery.. And no info about the main part of C drive (380gb of a total 500gb with music, video, pics). Unfortunately I'm not exactly sure what Rufus created because it was not a backup of the OS because it definitely was not big enough to be. My flash drive was only 8 gigs and almost enough to make it back up but not quite which is what I've been waiting on. I bought another big external hard drive + 3 flash drives different sizes, the smallest being 64 gb and the largest 256 gb. I think that should be enough to make a full backup not including personal files and music and stuff. All that stuff has already been transferred to another hard drive.

Update : when I got back on Wednesday I booted up and the little "working" circle froze and eventually the screen acted as though there was no signal. I hit return and the login screen appeared. Clearly something is up with the graphics card because everything is HDMI but it's looking like circa 2003 on here. It just never ends. It's done a few updates, several processes over and over, rolling drivers back and forth....but it seems to be working better. I haven't looked at all of it but I was able to get the info report from Intel and this time it has the info. I still can't say I'm sure the computer will stay this way because it seems to regress with every shut down/boot up, only to heal the next. I'd say you answered what you could from my rambling and confusing questions. I can upload that report if you want but I don't wanna waste your time.

Oh, by the way, there are 3-4 updates waiting on me (one Windows, drivers and another intel rapid storage....you can understand why I've not been in a rush to do that. The last 3 times it's nearly destroyed my machine and more importantly, my sanity. I'm sure you would recommend doing them? I guess I should and just hope for the best.

Thanks again for all the info!

Take care,

billsey

I do recommend doing them, it's likely that some of the fixes in them actually fix something that you've been seeing, but only after you have the important data backed up.

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