Hi,
I own a Acer Aspire A515-56G and recently
experience a nasty experience upgrading BIOS from ACER driver download as well
as within Windows Updates.
I would like to share my experience on this forum,
so others do not face this Windows corruptions issue - and need to fresh
install Windows and everything all over again:
1. Acer Driver sites a new BIOS version: v1.20
date 2021/11/17 here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/8628?b=1
Please do not upgrade from your
current v.1.13 to v1.20. My experience shows the motherboard/CPU heating up and
fan sound go up too much after this BIOS upgrade. You do not have any option to
downgrade from v1.20 to v1.13 (unless you know a tweak to manually edit some
config files, which I later discovered corrupts your MBR/UEFI? and
results in an Inaccessible Windows Boot device on this laptop)
2. The Windows 11 upgrade will try to install
Insyde Softare - Firmware ( esp. Win 11 Home edition user do not have choice to
stop this ) during regular OS updates. In my experience lately, all the
previous lower Insyde Firmware version upgrade, except for the One in Windows
Update -> Advanced Options - > Optional Updates ( Insyde Software -
Firmware - 5.42.1.20 ) is safe. NEVER INSTALL THIS OPTIONAL v5.42.1.20 one - as
its guaranteed to result in an Windows Boot device corruption. All the
available Startup Windows repair and MBR rebuild - will not help recover. The
only option which I had unfortunately faced ( twice last weekend and a day lost
( ) was to re-install Windows 11 fresh all over again and APPS etc. Lucky for
me the data backup was there - so I was kind of saved.
I hope Acer folks / moderators here reads this and
works with Microsoft and its Insyde BIOS partner to resolve this BIOS issues
with above Acer Aspire A515-56G model. Anyone else came across this?
//Edited the content to add model name.