Aspire 7520G BIOS recovery

Hi everyone,

I've got this laptop from a friend, he tried to update BIOS through Windows for some reason a few years back, the update failed in the middle of the process, but he was able to use the laptop as normal up until he was forced to reboot. The laptop didn't boot ever since.

Now years after I want to try to repair it. The laptop turns on, the fans spin, CD works, USB too. LCD never turns on however, but everything else seems to work fine. I've tried the method mentioned on this forum for the 7720 aspire I believe. However I wasn't sure what BIOS it is running. The Acer website lists Phoenix as the BIOS, while some people say its Insyde or something. After a bit of research I've deduced that it is in fact Phoenix, my friend wasn't sure either when I asked him as its been years since it last booted.

What I've done is the so called blind flash method. I've downloaded the BIOS files from Acer, made a bootable CD and placed the phlash16.exe file along with the WPH BIOS file, and created and autoexec.BAT file with this line " PHLASH16.exe ic50133.wph /py /sn", and burned everything with CDBurnerXP using their default Bootable disc settings.

Plugged out power, removed battery. Then held the fn+Esc keys plugged in power (power button ringed flashed) and turned the lappy on, the fans stay at max speed and the CD/DVD spins up seems like its reading for a few seconds and stops. As the guides mention it should shutdown by itself and restart, however it never does. I've tried the same by making a bootable USB with Rufus, same thing happens, it reads the USB for a few seconds and stops. I've also tried editing the autoxec.BAT line to the default that comes within the ZIP file PHLASH16 ic50133.wph /c /x /s /bbl /pn /mode=3, with no succes.

It seems to me as there is still hope, as I could've done something wrong, since it seems like the laptop reads the bootable drive but then something fails.. Maybe I didn't burn the CD correctly, or maybe the BIOS is after all not phoenix (highly unlikely), or something else entirely.

So if someone had experince with this or similar, please guide me or at least point me in the right direction.
Replacing the BIOS chip is a costly proces where I live and isn't worth doing for me.

 

I am having exactly the same issues i did you resolve the problem as this has been giving me a headache for weeks. any help with this will be much aprechiated <(probalbly wrong spelling!)

 

Hi, yes I managed to do it after 2 days of trying. It was a while ago and because I tried so many different things I don't remember exactly what worked in the end.

Basically the problem was that none of the programs have created bootable USB keys that could be recognized by the phoenix recovery. However following this guide worked.

This program wincris.exe is the only one that created and formatted the USB key correctly. What I did was download the official BIOS from Acer website, extract the key files phlash16.exe and the .WPH file (thats the actual BIOS), renamed it to BIOS.WPH.
Next I ran wincris.exe and followed the aforementioned guide to create a bootable USB. In the end I replaced the phlash16.exe in the newly created USB with the phlash16.exe that you get from Acer, however I don't believe this is necessary but I did it anyway.

As I said its been a while and I might have missed some steps, but try this and report back I might be able to help if something goes wrong.

Good luck!

 

i have tried the above step but i cant get the laptop to read the floppy or usb drive (i have tried both) is there something i am missing eg how long do i have to holf fn+esc after power on or do i have to remove hdd and optical drive?

 

If you do everything right you should be able to see the floppy/usb work (read light) holding the fn+Esc buttons isn't the issue i think because holding it for like 5 sec was enough in my case. The issue as far as I can tell from the little info you provide is that the usb/floppy isn't formatted correctly. If it just reads the usb/floppy a bit at start and then stops then that is the problem, so no matter how long you leave it, nothing will happen. My USB key was 1GB that is important from what I know.
I didn't try it with floppy via usb since I didn't have it so I don't know anything about that. Basically I followed the provided instructions in the wincrisis.zip formatted it that way and copied the bios phlash16 and the DOS to the usb and it worked.

If it is the EXACT same laptop and problem then I don't see why it wouldn't work for you if it did for me, unless you are doing something wrong.