Cannot access BIOS. Black screen with white underscore on the top left (SF315-51G)

silatiol
silatiol Member Posts: 6

Tinkerer
in Swift and Spin Series
Hello,
Since yesterday i cannot access my bios, when I press F2 at boot, i enter a black screen with a white underscore. I cannot do anything, only long press the power button to shutdown, ctrl+alt+canc does not work.

The PC boots fine if I don't press F2.

I already tried removing the battery.

What can I do? What caused the problem?

Thank you

Best Answer

  • silatiol
    silatiol Member Posts: 6

    Tinkerer
    Answer ✓
    JackE said:
    Remove the charger and battery pack again. Remove the CMOS lithium coin cell connector from the mainboard pins. Measure the voltage output of the coin cell with a multimeter. Should be 3.1 volts or more. Before reconnecting the coin cell, short its mainboard pins with a screwdriver for a few seconds. Also short mainboard jumper #2401 above the pins with the screwdriver for a few seconds. Then reconnect the coin cell, battery pack and charger. Turn it back on and try to enter the bios menu again. Jack E/NJ




    This didn't work. 

    But I fixed the problem formatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows. Probably the EFI or BOOT partition was corrupted.

    Thank you
«1

Answers

  • Commodore_1995#
    Commodore_1995# ACE Posts: 98,322 Trailblazer
    Have you tried resetting the battery?
    https://youtu.be/NfhgnxUJoZo
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  • Balatekie
    Balatekie ACE Posts: 1,353 Pioneer
    Hi!!

    @silatiol

    Sorry to know that you are unable to get into BIOS on Statup. No worries. Here is alternate way to Enter the BIOS on a Windows 10 PC. 

    1.  Navigate to settings. You can get there by clicking the gear icon on the Start menu.


    2. Select Update & security.


    3. Select Recovery from the left menu.


    4. Click Restart Now under Advanced startup. The computer will reboot to a special menu.


    5. Click Troubleshoot.


    6. Click Advanced options.


    7. Select UEFI Firmware Settings. If you don't see this icon, then press Startup Settings, instead. When your PC is restarting, tap F1 (or F2) to access the BIOS.



    8. Click Restart.


    Your system will restart and take you to the BIOS. Hope this helps you :)

     :) If you think I've answered your question, please hit the Accept Answer:)

  • silatiol
    silatiol Member Posts: 6

    Tinkerer
    edited December 2019
    egydiocoelho said:
    Have you tried resetting the battery?
    https://youtu.be/NfhgnxUJoZo
    Yes, I already tried. 
    It didn't work unfortunately.

    Balatekie said:
    Hi!!

    @silatiol 

    Sorry to know that you are unable to get into BIOS on Statup. No worries. Here is alternate way to Enter the BIOS on a Windows 10 PC. 

    1.  Navigate to settings. You can get there by clicking the gear icon on the Start menu.


    2. Select Update & security.


    3. Select Recovery from the left menu.


    4. Click Restart Now under Advanced startup. The computer will reboot to a special menu.


    5. Click Troubleshoot.


    6. Click Advanced options.


    7. Select UEFI Firmware Settings. If you don't see this icon, then press Startup Settings, instead. When your PC is restarting, tap F1 (or F2) to access the BIOS.



    8. Click Restart.


    Your system will restart and take you to the BIOS. Hope this helps you :)

     Same. Already tried. It still goes on the black screen with white underscore.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Remove the charger and battery pack again. Remove the CMOS lithium coin cell connector from the mainboard pins. Measure the voltage output of the coin cell with a multimeter. Should be 3.1 volts or more. Before reconnecting the coin cell, short its mainboard pins with a screwdriver for a few seconds. Also short mainboard jumper #2401 above the pins with the screwdriver for a few seconds. Then reconnect the coin cell, battery pack and charger. Turn it back on and try to enter the bios menu again. Jack E/NJ




    Jack E/NJ

  • Edoka
    Edoka Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer
    Same here! I am on an Acer Swift 1 (SF114-32), and I am unable to enter the BIOS. Same symptoms as above: a black screen with a steady, not blinking cursor in the left top corner.
    Anyway, I have tried out this program just before the problem arised: https://github.com/Elinvention/efibootmgr-gui

    Then I restarted, and tried to boot from DVD. No success, so I tried to enter BIOS, and voila: freeze. 

    I tried to set my USB DVD device as the "next boot" option, to boot from a DVD with that program from the git repo. DVD boot has worked when I first installed my machine, about 2 days ago, but after a while the possibility of DVD boot simply disappeared from the BIOS boot section, this is why I tried out that menu driven program, which calls "efibootmgr" under the hood, I think.

    Maybe the program places some bogus information onto the EFI system partition, which freezes the BIOS, when it tries to read and interpret it.
  • silatiol
    silatiol Member Posts: 6

    Tinkerer
    Answer ✓
    JackE said:
    Remove the charger and battery pack again. Remove the CMOS lithium coin cell connector from the mainboard pins. Measure the voltage output of the coin cell with a multimeter. Should be 3.1 volts or more. Before reconnecting the coin cell, short its mainboard pins with a screwdriver for a few seconds. Also short mainboard jumper #2401 above the pins with the screwdriver for a few seconds. Then reconnect the coin cell, battery pack and charger. Turn it back on and try to enter the bios menu again. Jack E/NJ




    This didn't work. 

    But I fixed the problem formatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows. Probably the EFI or BOOT partition was corrupted.

    Thank you
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Congrats on your success! Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • StevenGen
    StevenGen ACE Posts: 12,165 Trailblazer
    Firstly, take it to an Acer tech and don't update bios unnecessary! Which bios version are you all running? Is it the latest? Could be a bios upgrade issue or your current bios is corrupted in some way and needs upgrading.
    Warning: DO NOT attempt to upgrade a bios if you don't know what you are doing and/or can't recover a bad bios upgrade! As your laptop/computer will be bricked!

  • Edoka
    Edoka Member Posts: 12

    Tinkerer

    This is what has worked for me finally:

    sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
sudo mkinitcpio -p
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

    I issued these commands, and now I am able to enter UEFI / BIOS setup again.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    >>>DO NOT attempt to upgrade a bios if you don't know what you are doing>>>

    Good advice. Also don't try it if you don't know why you're doing it.  :)   Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Edoka>>>This is what has worked for me finally:>>>

    I think that only works for Sudoku not Windows.  :)    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • AndroidSmith
    AndroidSmith Member Posts: 1 New User
    silatiol said:
    Hello,
    Since yesterday i cannot access my bios, when I press F2 at boot, i enter a black screen with a white underscore. I cannot do anything, only long press the power button to shutdown, ctrl+alt+canc does not work.

    The PC boots fine if I don't press F2.

    I already tried removing the battery.

    What can I do? What caused the problem?

    Thank you
    well, my wife bought a Acer notebook, with Endless OS and this is happening here too. I managed to enter the Bios for a couple of times, but the bios seemed to be limited, it didn’t give the Boot option via USB, when I changed the primary boot I just can’t enter it anymore, exactly what happened to you
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer

    Press & hold the power button till the laptop completely shuts off. Remove charger. Press and hold a paperclip into the battery reset pinhole on the bottom. While still holding the paperclip, press and hold power button for 30 seconds. Then plug the charger back in. Then press and hold the F2 key. While still holding the F2 key, press the power button to turn the machine back on to try to re-enter the BIOS menu. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • megatux
    megatux Member Posts: 7

    Tinkerer
    Same here, brand new Nitro 5 model. Updated BIOS to latest version. Then touched UEFI and switched to AHCI SSD mode (Ctrl+s) to install Linux, after that it didn't startep anymore so I was able to factory reset Windows. After that, I was able to use both Windows and Linux BUT if I wanto to enter the BIOS, with F2 or from Windows restart option, it just blanck screen with cursor at top left position.  Is there a way to fix the BIOS?
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer

    However, before you try any of them, especially messing with the ESP partition, how did you factory reset Windows? If you used the ALT+F10 cold boot method with the Linux install still on the drive, the reset is not necessarily reliable any more especially after changing the SATA mode to AHCI. Jack E/NJ





    Jack E/NJ

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer

    Please answer. How did you factory reset Windows? If you used the ALT+F10 cold boot method with the Linux install still on the drive, the reset is not necessarily reliable especially after changing the SATA mode to AHCI. You might have to wipe the drive clean and re-install Win10 using Microsoft's USB media creation tool since the BIOS is probably still in AHCI SATA mode. Then check to see if you can access the BIOS normally before proceeding with the Linux install. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • megatux
    megatux Member Posts: 7

    Tinkerer
    JackE said:

    Press & hold the power button till the laptop completely shuts off. Remove charger. Press and hold a paperclip into the battery reset pinhole on the bottom. While still holding the paperclip, press and hold power button for 30 seconds. Then plug the charger back in. Then press and hold the F2 key. While still holding the F2 key, press the power button to turn the machine back on to try to re-enter the BIOS menu. Jack E/NJ
    Hi JackE, will this method loose my SSD data inside my partitions or will only affects BIOS?
    Thx
  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,234 Trailblazer
    JackE's suggestion will not affect anything on the SSD, you are safe there.
    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • vaisakh2044
    vaisakh2044 Member Posts: 1 New User
    Edoka said:

    This is what has worked for me finally:

    sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
sudo mkinitcpio -p
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

    I issued these commands, and now I am able to enter UEFI / BIOS setup again.

    bro I have the same problem after installing linux, I'm a complete noob, Can you help me to fix it on debian
  • Valdir1944
    Valdir1944 Member Posts: 2 New User

    For those that had this issue after a Linux installation on a Windows dual boot, with a separate boot partition, it's enough to delete the boot Linux partition to solve the problem.

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