REALLY strange boot issue on Acer Aspire 2930 laptop - corrupted BIOS???

The strangest thing has happened to my Acer Aspire 2930 laptop today.


I shut it down last night as I normally do, then this morning I turned it on and it wouldn't boot. It goes through BIOS and startup, but then it stops. It doesn't start loading Windows XP from the hard drive, it doesn't recognise boot CDs/DVDs. When I go into the BIOS, everything looks normal except the boot portion. There are several options there, but they don't say what they normally say. For instance, the first boot device, the hard drive, is completely invisible. What I mean is that the option is just not there, but when you move the selection around with the keyboard, you can tell it's supposed to be there. Look below for a better explanation. The other options are there, but they aren't recognising the devices. I have a friend with the exact same laptop and her BIOS shows everything as it should be. She's here now and I'm typing this on her laptop because I now have two dead computers here at home.


I don't get it. It's almost like the BIOS somehow became corrupted. I didn' t even know this could happen without attempting to flash the BIOS or something, and that's not what happened. I have never flashed the BIOS on this laptop. Not only can I not figure out what happened, there doesn't seem any way to fix it. I mean, if the laptop doesn't recognise any devices to boot from... I was thinking about taking it apart and resetting the CMOS, taking out the battery. I think that's the best I can hope for at this point. I don't have any way of cloning the BIOS from my friend's computer so I guess the next step would be to get a new BIOS chip if the CMOS reset doesn't work? The laptop is unfortunately one month over the one year warranty. I read that there's a way to get the laptop to read an external USB floppy diskette drive regardless of the status of the BIOS, you are supposed to hold the function key plus the escape key or something when you turn on the laptop a couple of times, and then it magically reads from the floppy drive. I would have to somehow buy or get a drive, but I haven't even seen such things in years. Any ideas? Things I can try?


Here is what my BIOS looks like compared to my friend's:


Mine:


2. IDE1 :
3. USB FDD :
4. Network Boot :
5. USB HDD :
6. USB CDROM :


My friend's:
1. IDE0 : Hitachi HTS542525K9SA00
2. IDE1 : HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T50N
3. USB FDD :
4. Network Boot : Realtek Boot Agent
5. USB HDD :
6. USB CDROM :


As you can see, there is definitely something wrong with my BIOS and I believe that's what is causing the computer not to boot.


Any suggestions??


PS: The BIOS on this laptop is Insyde H2O EFI 2.0 NB v1.11

 

If you remove the HDD does it boot from the DVD drive ?

 

It does not.

 

Hi,

you may try this:
Unplug your laptop from the wall outlet and remove the battery. Press the "power on" button for half a minute or something like that.

Add the battery and re-establish the power connection then.

Michael

 

Michael, not to be rude but that's the sort of troubleshooting reply I'd expect from Yahoo Answers, not a specialised site like NotebookReview.com.

 

OK so this is a new one on me too so, unless someone jumps in with the easy answer, we have to eliminate everything but the BIOS /MB

I suggest removing the RAM as well (it would normally do some sort of POST-under protest at this stage, should certainly work in F2 mode) and (not sure how easy on a 2390) the Optical drive.

Reason being the BIOS ought to just note errors from these devices and move on but I have read various reports of HDD problems halting the POST entirely. (Presumably causing the southbridge to report nonsense to the BIOS)

Regarding resetting: it is going to be worth at some point trying the two/three BIOS reset strategies.

1) Power on holding Esc down and keep holding until POST /bored
2) Remove BIOS battery for a while. Try to reboot without it
3) If you have a service manual for your Laptop the results of 2) can often be better achieved by shorting two points on the MB (often called RTC or CMOSRST etc) and maintaining the short while rebooting again as above

Finally:
Most BIOSES also have a last ditch reflash mechanism that works by loading a BIOS .fd file renamed to some pre-set name onto a USB (or Floppy) and booting while holding the esc key as above. I am afraid I do not have the details of how to do this on an Insyde BIOS and the speculation on the web sounds a bit over complicated. If anyone has then a 'sticky how to' thread would be great

Suggest you try the other things first

 

Thanks for your reply.

1. I will try this troubleshooting step again. I've tried it with several key combinations, but none have worked so far. I'll try just escape.

2. I have removed the RAM, the wireless card, the optical drive, and the hard drive now. Still no help when I try to boot.

3. After hours of taking this thing apart very carefully (what a pain that is on this particular laptop), I have located the CMOS battery. Unfortunately, the battery is stuck (glued?) between two thin little soft metal clips that are holding it to the motherboard precariously. I'm guessing that when service replaces these, they just quickly solder the battery and two clips to the motherboard as a unit. I have tried to peel the clips off, first by using a scalpel to get enough of a flap to start using forceps/tweezers on. The things seriously do not want to come off and I'm afraid if I keep trying, the clips will just break right off the motherboard. I would post a photo of what this looks like because it's a bit hard to explain, but I cannot connect my camera to the PC I'm typing on. It's almost like Acer does this to keep the average user from replacing the battery themselves. Annoying. I myself am not really adept at soldering, otherwise I would just remove the thing. Perhaps I'll do it as a last resort before dropping it off to be serviced and tell them to put the battery back on.

4. I will try and locate a service manual for this, but google hasn't been much help so far. I will post back as soon as I try steps 1 and 2 again.

 

IF the battery holder is a slide in type the cell should slide out once a retaining tab is bent out of the way.

However many batteries have the terminals spot welded to the battery and then those terminals soldered to the board. A photo would help but if it won't come out it is probably the spot welded type These types have nothing looking like a retaining clip or tab. It is not too hard to cut through the middle of the two terminal posts at the outside of the cell to break the connection but repairing this later is a challenge if you don't solder professionally

IF it is soldered in you can be pretty sure there are CMOS reset terminals on the motherboard somewhere - service try to avoid recreational MB soldering too.
Image, underside view of solder tagged spot welded lithium backup cell
http://www.allspectrum.com/store/images/RAYOVAC-BR2335T3L.jpg

 

You might wonder if you could short circuit the cell while you start the laptop booting through POST. However. This could be very dangerous.

Despite that many consumer applications risk very temporary short circuiting of coin cells as they are inserted in holders etc.

I will point you at http://www.rayovac.com/technical/pdfs/pg_lithium.pdf
which discusses the anticipated scenario where wave soldering leads to a 5 second short circuit of a new cell at elevated temperature too.

 

I have fantastic news. I was able to reset the BIOS by holding in the escape key and rebooting several times. I noticed on the first go that something different was happening when it recognised the DVD drive and then hung, then the second time it boot from the emergency boot disc I still had in the drive. After that, I popped the hard drive back in and things started working again. I went into the BIOS and it was back to normal! Except for the date and time, those were completely reset.

Then I put the laptop completely back together again and found I have two really small extra screws. No idea where those are supposed to go, haha. Anyway, everything works now and I shall be eating home cooked chateaubriand this evening medium rare.

Many, many thanks for all your help. I posted in two other well-known forums with lots of "experts" and received no replies whatsoever. Your expertise in laptop matters is second to none. I'd send you a steak and some wine, if I could.

 

You're welcome

 

If it were me, I'd run a full virus scan asap. There used to be some viruses that attacked bioses.

 

I have the same problem with my aspire 2930.

Can you explain how you do it. Holding up 'esc' key until when...

Thank You.