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    Acer 9300 BIOS failure and recovery tips

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by danhminh, Feb 15, 2009.

  1. danhminh

    danhminh Newbie

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    So this week-end, I set to find a solution to my Acer 9300, which was dead when I ugpraded the BIOS with that stup1d "winphlash" from Acer. I'm pretty sure I have a brick on my hand when I googled and found tips at this web site. Below are my experience with hope that someone can find it useful. :p


    Overall steps:

    o. use phoenix crisis recovery tool to create a boot disk
    o. replace the bios.wph with the oldest bios version (mam110.wph)
    . This floppy now have mini dos, phlash16.exe, and bios.wph
    o. fn+esc to load the bios file, you will hear the floppy reading the file (~ 2 mins) a silence period (~3 min).
    o. if successfully, the laptop reboot, you will see the bios screen. :)

    At this point, you would want to upgrade the laptop to appropriate bios version, here is what i did

    o. create a bootable CD ROM that would boot into the appropriate OS, load cd rom driver, and assign appropriate drive. This is important for the next step.

    o. create a cd rom that contains all bios version into folder. For example, i have v114, v117, v119. The reason is that i suspect each version use the appropriate phlash16.exe base on the time the bios is created.

    Note: if you can setup the bootable CD that would also contains the above folders, that would be better, as you don't have to reject the bootable cd and insert the bios cd.

    o. after you have the above create, you should know what need to be done from this point on. Basically the steps involve around boot up, navigate/select the appropriate bios, run the appropriate phlash16.exe (I manually run one of the below, one at a time.)
    phlash16 /x /mode=3 /BBL mam114.wph
    phlash16 /x /mode=3 /BBL mam117.wph
    phlash16 /x /mode=3 /BBL mam119.wph

    o. since 1.20 version is the one gave me trouble, i don't want to mess it it. b/c if it doesn't work, I will have to repeat the steps, and i already spent too much hours already.

    From hindsight, the most useful tips are:
    1. have the phoenix crisis recovery tool.
    2. have the bootable cdrom with all the bios version in appropriate folder
    3. know that the fn + esc would force the machine to read/load
    bios in special recovery mode. Note, this is also a blind mode as you can not see anything
    4. remove the HD so it's not part in the boot order
    5. I don't have autoexec.bat for the intitial recovery with the fn + esc and the bios load just fine. I believe the process look for phlash16.exe and the file bios.wph

    Tools that i used
    o. usb floppy drive
    o. screw driver to remove HD

    Download the bios files for your model from
    http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/ftp/ftp.html

    I forgot where i got the crisis recovery tool from. It's a zip file labeled B1800_crisis_recovery_disk.zip. The batch file, from Phoenix Technologies, crisdisk.bat is rev 1.0 31 Jul 201 16:54:02 . It's quite a good batch file.

    This link - http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service...447626+1234749986894+28353475&threadId=974719 - also discuss about the bios failure, but for HP/Compaq laptop.
    as well as this link - http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service...447626+1234749986894+28353475&threadId=974719

    This link provide a crisis recovery file - http://www.mediafire.com/?9xxmm43uiuz. Thanks to suka minkia

    special thanks to bbdiop, Frank1608, raelman, Steve Alan (Steve, your work w/ the chip is really impressive). I got quite a lot of tips from your guys

    On a side note, there should be a class action lawsuit against Acer for their improper testing.

    Regards.

    danhminh
    tlefam at yahoo dot com - if you want to reach me.
     
    danhminh, Feb 15, 2009
    #1
    shade42 likes this.
  2. anticlimatix

    anticlimatix Newbie

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    Thank you very much in advance for your useful information about recovering the bios of Acer 9300 laptop!
    Unfortunately I too bricked my laptop to trying to upgrade to firmware 1.20 from DOS (not from Winphlash). I upgraded up to 1.19 with success and when I installed 1.20 though the process was completed successfully the laptop didn't reboot again.
    Since then I tried everything you said but I can't manage to recover it :(
    I tried everything you said with the difference I used an USB Flash drive and a CD instead of USB Floppy...
    Do you know if it works without a USB Floppy or not and how?
    Do you know if I have to copy the .rom or the .wph file to BIOS.wph? And also do you happen to have the Phoenix Crisis Recovery Tool you used since what I've found it may be different?
    I finally want to tell you that when I press the Fn-ESC buttons the machine reads the usb, CD whatever but only for a couple of seconds, something that tells me it can't find the proper files...
     
    anticlimatix, Mar 13, 2009
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