Acer Aspire M1201 wont start he only visible thing it does is the flashing/blinking cd/dvd driver

dellitvs

Hi there,

since today's morning, my pc wont start. The only visible thing it does is the flashing/blinking cd/dvd driver…2 slowly flashes and 2 fast flashes.

Usually that's enough to solve the problem if there's any info about. But i couldn't find a single track. Anyone around here have a clew about it? Or any suggestions?

Thanks anyway

[Edited the thread to add issue detail]

billsey

Boy, that is an oldie, it came originally with Windows Vista IIRC. It's old enough I don't have access to a service guide though, so I can't do much diagnosis. The optical drive does it's own initialization at power up, so it won't be indicating anything about the system itself. Do you get any beeps when you power it up? Do the fans start spinning? We can assume the power supply itself is working, since the optical drive comes on…

dellitvs

"Oldie just like myself…"

No beeps. The fans starts. And yes, the power supply works.

Just guessing but in this models, the cd/dvd driver is the first to boot/start the SO. If there's a malfunction it might wont start…just guessing!

billsey

Yes, a pretty wild guess in my opinion. :) POST typically starts by initializing the first memory block, then the CPU, then starts executing the BIOS code. Once that code is running it does a more exhaustive memory test and starts bring up devices one by one. With newer machines this all ends with a load of the EFI then starting filesystems and finally the OS load. The optical drive isn't really started until filesystems are mounted. With your system only the EFI load is skipped, choosing an MBR instead. The optical drive has enough smarts of it's own in it to do it's own initialization when powered up, and that's what you are seeing. In normal circumstances the end of POST gives a beep to say everything completed fine and at that point to OS is started. You aren't getting that beep and you aren't getting any of the beep patterns that show an error in POST so most likely POST isn't getting started. That could be a corrupted BIOS, maybe due to a dead CMOS battery or a failed motherboard or CPU.