Bios upgrade failure

PCnut
PCnut Member Posts: 3 New User
edited October 2023 in 2020 Archives

I have an Acer Aspire 9300-5317 running XP Media Center v 2002 SP2 and IE 6.0.2900. This has been barely used in the past 10 years as my wife used it to give seminars, usually 2 - 3x per year. Spent most of its life in its case. I recently upgraded the memory to 4G and tried to install Windows 10, but get a bios error message. Yesterday (2/23/17) I visited the Acer website, entered all the pertinent info and was provided with bios upgrade v1.20. I ran the upgrade and now all I get is a black screen. The power button lights up, but it makes no attempt to boot. Help please! Also, can the motherboard be replaced?

 

Thanks!

Best Answer

  • PCnut
    PCnut Member Posts: 3 New User
    Answer ✓

    An interesting turn of events. I removed the two new 2GB memory chips and put back in the two half-G chips and the laptop started right up!

    I experimented with different arrangements and found that the pc will run with one new 2GB chip and one old .5 GB chip, but not twon 2GB's. Prior to the bios flash, it ran on the two 2GB chips.

    I then installed Windowsn 10 and it is working fine!

     

Answers

  • Trukntigger
    Trukntigger Member Posts: 256 Mr. Fixit WiFi Icon

    Very old unit you have there.  Bad bios flash usually bricks the motherboard (aka factory need to replace bios chip which is not really done). Motherboard could be replaced...however I question the cost factor.  You may be better off replacing said laptop and pull hard drive from the old one.  Using a usb sata adaptor you could then extract any data you wished to recover from old drive. Replacing the bad bios chip also an option, there are websites that can provide a new chip however it is not a easy job and takes skill to remove the surface mounted chip and replace without damaging the motherboard thus not advised without having the experience and tools for this kind of work. All this assumes the 4gb ram you added did funtion properly before you tried win10 or the bios update.  As for the bios reflash again, not possiable without the bios working so as to even boot from an external device and indication is no operation/bad flash/bricked.

  • PCnut
    PCnut Member Posts: 3 New User

    Thanks for your reply. I suspected it was "bricked". Do you know if the bios is pressed in or soldered into the motherboard.

  • Trukntigger
    Trukntigger Member Posts: 256 Mr. Fixit WiFi Icon

    Normally soldered.  I have not seen socketed except for old pentium 500 days.  Last 10 years or so now even my personal build desktops use Gigabyte motherboards with dual bios just because I had a brick happen once. With the dual bios I can flash and if fails can activate backup bios, restore and try again.  In your current place I would open and look, can not hurt and any factory promise long since gone. If socketed you would spot it very quickly. Use a web search of bios chips- just photos give a good idea. If is socketed, lucky and web search should come up with replacement. Soldered and like I said, I was a electronic eng tech for years and it is a real tricky job. Surface mount chips are hard to remove without damage to the land pads they are soldered too. Once way back I even looked into lifting the key legs of the chip and run a serial connection from another pc to reflash it manually but had issues getting pc to send the data to start the flash process. Was after that I went to dual bios motherboards on desktops. I have yet seen that feature an option on laptops.  Always a risk flashing but sometimes you have to do it.

      So- open, look for it, worse case evaluate what you can save and go from there. I do wish I had better options but they use the term bricked for a reason.

  • PCnut
    PCnut Member Posts: 3 New User
    Answer ✓

    An interesting turn of events. I removed the two new 2GB memory chips and put back in the two half-G chips and the laptop started right up!

    I experimented with different arrangements and found that the pc will run with one new 2GB chip and one old .5 GB chip, but not twon 2GB's. Prior to the bios flash, it ran on the two 2GB chips.

    I then installed Windowsn 10 and it is working fine!

     

  • Mmud
    Mmud Member Posts: 1 New User
    I have an Acer Aspire 9300 and did the same thing by upgrading the 2gb 4200 ram with 4gb 5300 ram. The machine kept giving the same bios error after the switch. And, running the same Windows "attempting to repair" screen then shutting off. It would run only one stick of 2gb 5200 just fine but not two, and not one stick of each …new and old ram together. So, I looked in the bios and this machine has 633mb of shared video ram. So, I'm pretty sure that adding 4gb of new ram + the internal shared ram at 633mb put me over the 4gb maximum ram that this computer will run at. That's why I cannot use two sticks of 2gb ram at the same time. It would equal 4gb 633mb. I am also assuming that 4200 speed and 5300 speed will not work together because I get the same bios error when installing one new and one old. So, I'm returning one of the 4gb 5300 speed for one stick of 1gb 5300 speed ram and will try that out. I'll let you know after I install the 3gb 5300 speed to let you know if this worked. Also, this machine will run Win 10, but it is slow. Hopefully with the 3gb of the faster speed ram will help it speed up.

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