Trying to access BIOS result in black screen and still white underscore

volpepe · September 2018

Hello,
I am new to this forum and not very fluent in english, but I'll try my best to describe my problem.
I own a Acer Swift SF315-51G laptop which has been working perfectly fine for the last few months. I installed a second operating system (Manjaro Linux) and could enter into the BIOS pressing F2 at bootup as normally intended. Also, I succesfully upgraded my BIOS to v 1.05 (which is the newest available version for my model on the website - apparently) and still, I could access the BIOS without any problems anytime I wanted.
Yesterday, though, I noticed I have some sort of problem I can't quite understand. When I press F2 on bootup the screen goes black and there is a still white underscore on the top left corner. I usually got asked for a master password to access the BIOS and that has always been working until yesterday, apparently. I don't really know when the problem started.
It looks like the BIOS is stuck on loading. I hear no weird sounds coming from the computer: everything is perfectly calm and still. If I want to retry or just get back to using Window I have to turn it off manually.
I'll say it again just to clarify: my computer automatically boots into Windows, and the booting process is 100% working and fine and fast as can be! I just can't access the BIOS!
I don't understand what might have caused the problem and I don't know if there's a way to "reset" my BIOS to factory settings or anything like that. Apart from changing the boot order I have never used it for anything else. The internet doesn't really help: it looks like my problem is pretty rare, so any help is appreciate.
Thanks,
Federico

Commodore_1995# · September 2018

I've been through a similar problem! A palliative solution is that when you see the white dash in the upper left corner, you must press ctrl + alt + del to restart the notebook and press the f2 key again! He'll probably get on the second try!

If it enters the bios, click load setup defaults and then press f10 to save on exit and see if it solves the problem!

eduardocampi · June 2020

volpepe said:

Hello,
I am new to this forum and not very fluent in english, but I'll try my best to describe my problem.
I own a Acer Swift SF315-51G laptop which has been working perfectly fine for the last few months. I installed a second operating system (Manjaro Linux) and could enter into the BIOS pressing F2 at bootup as normally intended. Also, I succesfully upgraded my BIOS to v 1.05 (which is the newest available version for my model on the website - apparently) and still, I could access the BIOS without any problems anytime I wanted.
Yesterday, though, I noticed I have some sort of problem I can't quite understand. When I press F2 on bootup the screen goes black and there is a still white underscore on the top left corner. I usually got asked for a master password to access the BIOS and that has always been working until yesterday, apparently. I don't really know when the problem started.
It looks like the BIOS is stuck on loading. I hear no weird sounds coming from the computer: everything is perfectly calm and still. If I want to retry or just get back to using Window I have to turn it off manually.
I'll say it again just to clarify: my computer automatically boots into Windows, and the booting process is 100% working and fine and fast as can be! I just can't access the BIOS!
I don't understand what might have caused the problem and I don't know if there's a way to "reset" my BIOS to factory settings or anything like that. Apart from changing the boot order I have never used it for anything else. The internet doesn't really help: it looks like my problem is pretty rare, so any help is appreciate.
Thanks,
Federico

Have you found the answer? It happened to me too, the exact same thing!

egydiocoelho said:

I've been through a similar problem! A palliative solution is that when you see the white dash in the upper left corner, you must press ctrl + alt + del to restart the notebook and press the f2 key again! He'll probably get on the second try!
If it enters the bios, click load setup defaults and then press f10 to save on exit and see if it solves the problem!

This does not work. The same thing happens when it reboots again.
Se puder me ajudar, sou brasileiro. Pode ser em português

volpepe · June 2020

eduardocampi said:
Have you found the answer? It happened to me too, the exact same thing!

Hey there! If I remember correctly, I stopped looking for an answer at that time. egydiocoelgo's answer didn't work for me and I just stopped caring, but after a few months, Acer released the 1.06 version of the BIOS and that upgrade made it work again. I highly recommend updating if you haven't yet. If you already have that version, waiting for a future upgrade might be the only solution, even though 1.06 was released in December 2018 and 1.07 might never see the light of day.
Spamming f2 super fast also worked for me, but just once after many hours of tries: it might be easier in your case, though!
Also, since I only needed to access the bios to modify the boot order, I used a Windows application that pretty much does the same thing. It's called Hasleo EasyUEFI. I don't how secure or legit it is and it certainly doesn't feel like an official method, but I was desperate and it got the job done. Check it out if that's what you need to do.

Commodore_1995# · June 2020

@eduardocampiIf the answer from colleague valpepi does not help you, create a new topic in the Portuguese community and add me by placing an @. It would be interesting to know if this problem occurred after installing linux.

eduardocampi · June 2020

It didn't solve the problem. Spamming F2 doesn't work. Using Hasleo EasyUEFI I can change the boot order, but something changes it back. I restart, windows boots and when I open the app again, the old boot order is there

volpepe · June 2020

I'm sorry about that. Hopefully these comments and a new post might attract new answers that actually work. If you guys manage to find it somewhere else, please let me know too!