Can not flash the motherboard..Solved!!

My acer one was working like a charm till last night when the drive stated making a clicking sound. I turned off the machine and tried to reboot. When I did that all I got was the curser flashing after the bios screen, I tried it a few time and still no go. I decided to plug in my cd-rom drive and reinstall the acer recover discs. Still no go and would only get past the bios screen. I reboot the machine again and now I'm not even getting the bios screen. I have the black screen of death. Ok, flashed the bios, machine boots and still have the black screen of death. Ok, flashed the bios again, but the power led kept flashing green for 20 mins. I power the computer off and restarted again, still the black screen of death. Now, every time I flash the bios the power led keeps flashing and doesn't stop till I turn off the computer by pushing the power button. I think that everything is getting power as the fan turns and the light come on, but some how the controller is damages as the usb, screen, vga port, are all not working. Any ideas?

I'm flashing correctly. I have renames the file and I'm using the same flash drive that I did my previous flash on. I know it's not the flash drive or my file names.

PLEASE HELP!!!!!

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

I've also tried flashing the bios from 3310 down to 3308. I still get the same result, the bios will not flash correctly and the power button keeps flashing for over an hour until I hold the power button down for like 5 secs to turn off computer. PLEASE HELP!!!

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

From what you said it sounds to me like you have a bad hard drive. Try booting from a Live CD/DVD like Linux Mint or Ubuntu. If that works then it is just the boot sector of your hard drive that is messed up making it possible to access the drive but not boot from it. Try and get your data off the hard drive and save it. Then get a new drive.

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

Hi, I was thinking about that too, but I don't think that is the problem as I disconnected the drive from the computer. The only things that I have connect right now are the screen, keyboard, and memory. I'm still having the flashing issue. I'm not sure what else to do. It seems to me that flash software is looking for my usb drives. Everything that I plug in is not being pickup by the system. Therefore, I thinking that is must be controller has gone bad. Any ideas?

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

I think you should let the flashing process go on for longer. I would give it probably at least a half hour. I think once you have it flashed then you may still not be able to boot from the drive though.

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

The latest thing that I'm trying is leaving the bios battery out for a day or two to see if that will have any effect. I'll try again to flash it and leaving it in for an hour and a half to see if there is any difference.

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

Ok, I waited out the weekend and tried starting it up today. It's doing the same thing, but now I noticed that the fan is not working. The unit powers on, the fan works for a 3 secs and then fan stops working. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

OK, well that didn't work. I left the cmos battery out for a week to see if that might correct the problem, but I'm still having the same issues as in when I try to flash the bios. It seems to be not reading the flash drive. The power light keeps flashing for over an hour and it doesn't seem to be updating the flash.

I've been pouring over the forums and I saw that my ram might be bad. I changed the ram out with another stick and still the same issue.

I'm beginning to think that I need to replace the bios chip as I know that I've bricked the motherboard. Has anyone done this before where you solder a new bios chip on to the motherboard? Any tips?

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

If you solder on the motherboard be sure you use a low watt soldering iron or you may damage the motherboard. You should research the motherboard to find out if it is a multi-layer board. If it is then that means you may have runs between the layers that you can not see, that could become unsoldered when heat is applied.

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

Ugh, I screw up and pulled off one of the contact pads. I'm going to scratch off the some of the board to see it I can get the contact area to touch bios chip. Darn!!!

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

hi mate if you get this working let me know, i have 2 of these like this, they just flash, i once went shopping left one to see if it would flash and no joy, came back to it still having the power led flashing after about an hour, it never reads the usb stick at all. Both of these had no life from the fan, but one had the fan come back to life after a weekend of the cmos battery unplugged but still doesnt flash. I did have 1 that would read the usb drive but wouldnt boot still has the black screen of death, this turned out to be the memory that was used to upgrade it

If you have any joy with it please let me know, as it seems a replacement 2nd hand motherboard is nearly as much as buying a 2nd hand aspire one

Mark

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

Yup. i got it working. You will need to replace the bios chip. I got them off ebay for $10.00

 

Re: Can not flash the motherboard..need help

Hi, I was think about your post try these before you go out and buy the bios chip try the following:

1) try a different usb stick
2) People say that leaving the cmos battery out for an a week might work.
3) try re-seating the ram or else replace with one that you know that works
4)make sure that the file names are named correctly on the usb stick.

If all that fails replacing cmos chip.

FYI, I caused myself a lot more work that I had to do as I lifted the pads off the board. SO BECAREFUL WHEN REMOVING THE CMOS CHIP. Use low heat and don't over heat the board or else you will lift the contacts off the board and it a pain in the ass to reattach.