How to upgrade BIOS on a 5720 aspire ?

Hi Everyone and Happy New Year !

Question is as title of thread asks...how do you upgrade the bios ?

I went to the acer euro website for the latest 1.21 mines 1.14

http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_5720.html

however when I try to install the files I get an error message..

" Insydeflash cannot load the driver .Please close all the applications. If you are running this utility in Vista, please run as administrator"

Hmm I ran this as admin ..no applications running...can anyone help ?

Thanks in advance

 

same thing on my 7720.......

 

Had the same problem upgrading the BIOS on my EX5620. The flash utility returned the same error and the related batch file crashed as well.
There are a number of work arounds but here's how I solved the problem om my unit. The 5620 has a Phoenix BIOS, yours may be similar with only the file names changed. I downloaded the BIOS zip file to another PC and openned all the zipfiles, (I also downloaded all of the drivers and utils for XP since that is the directoin that I'm going). I then burned a bootable CD with all the drivers on it. I used a version of Nero to do that, just select make a "Bootable data disk" from the menu and use the default boot image. Now set your notebook to boot from the CD drive and boot from the CD you just created. After the boot process finishes, browse to your CD drive, it'll have a drive letter assigned F: in my case, look for the BIOS flash directories and run the generic flash utility

In my particular case to update to BIOS v1.22 the documented option directed me to run the clb-122.exe file to start the upgrade. That procedure fails under Vista and also under DR-DOS. There's also a copy of the generic Phoenix BOS update utility, phlash16.exe, on the directory and a batch file to run it. I couldn't get the batch file to run properly (probably fails to authenticate that the laptop is plugged into the AC). So what I did was to issue the commands manually and it worked like a charm. I left out the /s parameter so that I could sweat out all the beeps! On my particular setup the command line I used was phlash16 /x /c /mode=3 /BBL /pn clb-122.wph

You can run the phlash16 utlity with the /? parameter to get help on the command. Remember that your file names are going to be different. Just use this as a guide. Hope it helps.

 

if you runing under vista right click the file and do run as administrator?

 

Wow, so simply, but someone must tell me ....... that's it
10x

 

yessss was easy when u know thanks ...must say you cant change much in the bios...not tweaker friendly so to speak !

The acer euro website is THE best for updated drivers..they seemingly are looking after their customers unlike the other acer sites with old drivers and no BIOS drivers at all.

Cheers

 

Hi
Can I please ask, I notice you said the bios is pretty non tweakable, can you alter the integrated graphics memory size please?
On my 5720 Aspire the graphics are suposed to go up to 358mb (dynamically asigned by the laptop) but it never seems to go above 128mb despite how much I tax the graphics card.

Would love to know if ou can tweak it in the newest bios or similar.

Thanks a lot

BobSpoons

 

I post my experience here in case it helps others. Experience, not howto.
Do not follow unless you have no alternatives, as theoretically it is the most risky way.
I was forced to upgrade the bios else 64 bit linux has serious issues, i chose to update using freedos 1.0. Vista, i had removed it cause it took too much hd space and was too slow (laptop was supposed to be an upgrade, you know...)

I got the full live cd image from freedos.org
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/fdfullcd.iso

Using k3b under linux - nero or whatever is in your OEM windows install will do the same with windows - i burned the iso to cd.

I got the bios from acer europe, v. 1.40 (i had 1.19 installed)
I have an usb key with the first partition (350mb) was formatted with vfat so i can use it to exchange files. I put the downloaded .zip in the usb drive.

It probably doesn't matter but the usb key is formatted with vfat16 and with bootable flag set.

Rebooting from freedos live cd i chose to start the live cd (no himem, no EXWhatever. No safe mode either. The "start the live cd" option)
once i had the DOS prompt, on A:, i found the usb drive at C: (sometimes it is at B: ) i used DOS "unzip" program to unpack the archive, used "more" to display the readme, and followed the instructions for the DOS install. That is, for 1.40, unzipping CLxxxxxA.zip, getting into the subdirectory and invoking the .bat file. Lappy was with full charge and connected to AC. After about one minute and much prayer, the message of completion appeared and the laptop restarted itself.

I repeat, don't do this unless you have no other way.

 

from the advanced tab of display properties,,, click on the INTEL GRAPHICS MEDIA ACCELETOR... click graphics properties

click the 3D SETTINGS at bottom left .... go down the list that opens....
locate DRIVER MEMORY FOOTPRINT
change it's setting to HIGH

that's the only setting i've been able to find reguarding the memory allocation