ACER Aspire XC-605 Black screen on boot, no banner, no BIOS access, no Win 10. But Ubuntu works

With my ACER Aspire XC-605, (dual boot Win 10 / Ubuntu) I have a black screen on boot, even cold boot.
The PC beeps correctly on startup.
There is no manufacturer startup banner screen
I cannot access UEFI / BIOS.

If I do nothing, Ubuntu starts and works perfectly. Video (and everything else) works perfectly.
If I hit any key, eg F2, F7, F12 then I get nothing just black screen, monitor shows yellow status (not connected), no disk activity. But after a while there is an occasional flash from the disk activity light. If I press CTRL-ALT-DEL several times, the system wakes up and slowly Ubuntu starts normally.

I can find no way to access the UEFI BIOS. Nor of course Win 10.
No access to the BIOS is annoying because I was hoping to do a full disk image copy with my CD of Clonezilla Live, but without access to the BIOS I cannot boot from CD.

Background:
10 days ago, I had a dual boot Win 10 / Ubuntu 16.04 system. UEFI based, not legacy.
This ACER Aspire XC-605 is my occasional desktop, which I keep to run Win 10 - which happens rarely.
There have been no hardware changes to the PC ever. And only recommended SW updates.

Summary of situation now:
- the hardware is working perfectly.
- When booting, even coldboot, there is no ACER startup banner screen
- When Ubuntu starts, everything works perfectly.
- If any key is touched in the startup time, a black screen remains. It appears that the system is working but the screen is not.

I have even tried booting with the hard disk detached. Fan OK, beep OK, but black screen. Nothing - no error message.

So, as a first step, I am looking to find out why no ACER startup banner screen

Your advice appreciated.

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

Accepted answers

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Commodore_1995#

Did you update bios before presenting the problem? What version of bios is currently installed on the computer? Did you check if the problem persists in another hd?

pe9298

No BIOS updates ever.

But a breakthrough!

I focussed on the video aspect of the problem.

I noticed that the ACER comes with a HDMI connector to the ACER monitor.

So I tried an old monitor which will support VGA.

It works. Now I have one black screen and one working VGA screen.

The ACER banner appears only on the VGA monitor. And I can boot from a DVD. (It happens to be memtest, which is the one I normally start with when I have a problem)

Now how do I get the banner page and grub on the HDMI monitor (which was working a short time ago)?

Commodore_1995#

Try this: with the monitor on in vga mode, enter windows 10 and go to the power options; disable quick startup and turn off the desktop! Now connect the monitor to the hdmi port and see if it solves the problem!

pe9298

Thanks for the tip.

As you suggested, I disabled quick startup (which is a good idea) but the HDMI monitor did not start up.

Commodore_1995#

Did you try to update your video card driver?

Commodore_1995#

Try also to do a power reset:

a) to do this, turn off the desktop and unplug it from the power; press the power button for thirty seconds and then verify that the problem has been solved!

pe9298

I did try the video card driver update. No change.

But another breakthrough.

I was going through all the BIOS options looking for fast boot - which I could not find.
But under boot options I opened the parameter for the hard disk. Inside that, there were 2 options:
- 1st Win Boot manager
- 2nd Ubuntu
So I swapped them around.

Now I am almost home.

I have 2 monitors.
It starts on the VGA one.
- If I quickly hit F12, I get the Win Boot manager. Then I get Win 10, but on the VGA.
- If I do nothing, it shows Grub in the VGA then the first Ubuntu screen, the one with ubuntu and underneath a line of 5 dots. Then, suddenly, the HDMI monitor starts and the VGA too.

So if I want the nice HDMI monitor, the only problem is that I need to use 2 monitors.

But if I disconnect the HDMI monitor, then everything seems to work with just the VGA one.

Commodore_1995#

Make sure that in the video card settings, you have the hdmi monitor as your primary device! Then press windows + r and type msconfig; in the general section, select normal startup and restart!

Commodore_1995#

Can you tap a photo of all sections of the bios? Tap a photo also from the integrated peripherals section!

pe9298

This is my 2nd desktop and if it only works with a VGA connected monitor, then it is no great loss to me.

I still wonder what happened, but it is time to move on.

Unless anyone has some last comments, I suggest we close this forum thread.

Thanks to everyone who contributed helpful ideas.

Commodore_1995#

Did you get to update the video driver?

pe9298

"Did you get to update the video driver? " - yes.

No change.

Commodore_1995#

Make sure the bios has some setting to change the startup setting of the onboard video card to the offboard video card! Generally the desktops offer some settings for the video card in bios! TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS CONFIGURATION!

skanpaul

Hi Pe9298,

You know what !!!!

You are a hero for me ! I also have an ACER XC-605 and I have also installed Ubuntu and you solve my problem of being unable to switch between both OS, windows 10 and ubuntu.

After having installed ubuntu, every time a restart the desktop, I could not see grub at all and Ubuntu start again. I tried it maybe 10 times.

Then, by using Ubuntu, I changed the booting order with this tool ⇒ https://itsfoss.com/grub-customizer-ubuntu/

After that, every time a restart the desktop, I could not see grub at all and Windows 10 start again. I did it several times too.

After more than 6 hours of investigation I found your discussion here.

I have neither a VGA monitor nor VGA Cable, thus I can not see GRUB. ⇒ I have only an HDMI monitor with an HDMI cable.

Now every time, I restart the ACER XC-60, I have to imaginate I have GRUB in front of me, then:

I wait for the first "bip" and start to count up to 8 secondes
After 8 secondes, I choose my OS quickly
1. by clicking [ENTER] to select the 1st OS
2. or by clicking [DOWN], then clicking [ENTER] to select the 2nd OS

All that without seeing GRUB, just imaginating that GRUB is displayed hahah.

I thing UBUNTU is faulty about that.

The 1st time I have reboot from the USB key by using windows 10, I could see on my HDMI monitor the installation guide for ubuntu asking to "install" or "try withtout installing" ubuntu.

When Ubuntu was installed and when I choose to make Windows 10 to load first, the 2nd time I have tried to reboot from the USB key by using windows 10, I could NOT SEE on my HDMI monitor the installation guide for ubuntu asking to "install" or "try withtout installing" ubuntu. It was maybe diplayed on the VGA port.

billsey

If you have the boot menu enabled in the BIOS, you should be able to just press F12 when you first start up and get the menu that allows you to choose which OS to load.

skanpaul

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1259681#Comment_1259681

Maybe read again what was written about the strange issue of GRUB showing on VGA but not on the HDMI …

billsey

That's usually an issue with either the GPU not scaling a low resolution screen to something the monitor can handle, or an issue with the monitor not being able to handle the low resolution used by the BIOS. In most cases the BIOS is displayed in either 800x600 or 1024x768 and the native resolution for a lot of monitors is 1920x1080 or higher. The monitor tells your system what resolutions it's can handle and the GPU needs to scale to a supported resolution.

skanpaul

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1260277#Comment_1260277

Thank for your further information.

The motherboard of my ACER XC-605 had 2 connectors, 1x VGA and 1x HDMI. Both of them were locked with some plastic covers. It's was like saying to not connect anything.

There is a separated graphic card (plugged on the motherboard) with 1x DVI connector and 1x HDMI connector. My monitor is connected to the HDMI connector of the separate graphic card and here I can not see GRUB.

I didn't try to connect my monitor to the VGA connector of the motherboard because I dont have a monitor with VGA connection.

I didn't try to connect my monitor to the HDMI connector of the motherboard because it is covered with a plastic plate. I tried once to remove it, but I havn't succeed.

Maybe, the hdmi connector of the motherboard would show GRUB.

billsey

Are you sure it is a Aspire XC-605 and not a Aspire XC-605G? The G models have the onboard video disabled by the inclusion of a GPU card, so they have the plastic covers over those. If someone removed the GPU card, then you would remove the covers and use the onboard video.Typically when a GPU card is installed, the motherboard video is supposed to be completely disabled…