Attempted BIOS update on defective Acer Nitro desktop N50-600-EB18

Smitten8r

My Acer Nitro desktop N50-600-EB18 has been experiencing intermittent start-up problems for a few months, and I was able to keep using the PC by moving the RAM into different DIMM slots. However, I have exhausted this work-around and I believe I'm either facing a defective motherboard with problematic DIMM slots or a corrupted BIOS that needs to be updated. Of course, I want to try updating the BIOS as this might present a solution, but I can't boot into Windows or EFI shell to perform the update. My current BIOS is version R01-C0 and I'm trying to update to R1-D1. Please let me know if there is a trick to booting to EFI shell or if there is a crisis recovery procedure that I can follow.

[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]

StevenGen

Attempted BIOS update on defective N50-600-EB18

Smitten8r

Sep 1, 2023

My Acer Nitro desktop N50-600-EB18 has been experiencing intermittent start-up problems for a few months, and I was able to keep using the PC by moving the RAM into different DIMM slots. However, I have exhausted this work-around and I believe I'm either facing a defective motherboard with problematic DIMM slots or a corrupted BIOS that needs to be updated. Of course, I want to try updating the BIOS as this might present a solution, but I can't boot into Windows or EFI shell to perform the update. My current BIOS is version R01-C0 and I'm trying to update to R1-D1. Please let me know if there is a trick to booting to EFI shell or if there is a crisis recovery procedure that I can follow.

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First try to clear the CMOS and also clearing the bios chip by taking the bios battery out and then putting the bios battery back again, to do all this look at the guide below. Note, a faulty ram or its DIMM slots will not allow your laptop to boot, also have a look at the ram DIMM slots if any of its pins are lose or broken at where they are soldered onto the mainboard, as that could be the issue also.

Smitten8r

Thanks for the response! Unfortunately, after trying to clear CMOS by both taking the battery out and by using the "CLEAR_CMOS" jumper, it still doesn't work. I'm considering the use of an EEPROM programmer like the CH341a programmer to directly program the BIOS, but my research shows this requires a "bin" file whereas Acer provides BIOS updates in a "CAP" file. Further, a look at the motherboard shows two potential bios chips, an 8MB and a 4MB chip. This seems confusing and makes me think that this attempt is not worth it, however the computer is useless to me right now anyway. Any thoughts on other potential solutions before I go down this rabbit hole?