Acer Aspire 5535 black screen of death

worldwheeler

Had the black screen of death and no start up on a AA 5535 a couple of days ago. The machine is about three years old and is run on cable with no battery..
Tried all the fixes of holding power button 30sec, Fn Esc and power, etc ...but no joy. Removed the back disconnected HDD, wirelesscard, Ram, and the cooling fan with heat sink. Then cleaned old paste from CPU and GPU. Put new thermal paste on the CPU and GPU and placed 1.2mm copper shims on them before replacing the heat sink and fan. Didn't plug the fan in. Turned the machine on and left for 10 - 15mins. The heat sink had got hot. Reinstalled the HDD, Ram and wireless card while the heat sink cooled down, about 20mins.
Pressed the power button and away went the computer as if nothing was wrong. Did some checks and hit the restart option on power off a couple of times and it shut down and restarted fine. Then I shut it down and then tried to start it back up pressing the power button, argh black screen of death and no starting, just fan & HDD spin few a second or two and the rom clicks a few times, then nothing.
Checked on line and many said the no start is a failing BIOS and it needs to be flashed with a new bios on a USB stick. Went to Acet site download the bios and extracted the files. The online fixes say find file ending .fd and rename it zg586.fd (or something like that) put that file along with one other on the usb stick , put that in the broken laptop and it will bios boot from the stick and cure the problem.
ONLY, the bios from acer when extracted shows no .fd file or any other file in other online fixes, like DOS file. So I am back to having a broken laptop.
Anyone have any experience in fixing a 5535 and have any suggestions?

NiftyDigits

You need the ROM file, which you rename for the BIOS recovery. The ROM file is here.

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

You need the ROM file, which you rename for the BIOS recovery. The ROM file is here.

Thanks for the reply.
I have a AMD64 bit acer running a 32bit OS
These are the files I get from the bios extract.
x64 folder
ABVXD.VDX
CP2A_104.EXE
flash.sys
readme.txt

inside the x64 folder:
CP2A_104.exe
flash64.system
settings.ini
WFlash.DAT

Now just to be sure which CP2A_104 file should I use and what should it be renamed? Also do I need to put the flash file on the USB stick aswell?

I have found this http://www.fixya.com/support/t3663874-corrupt_bios_acer_aspire_5535
But I am unsure of the rename as I have AMD turion 64 x2 with a 32bit OS.

NiftyDigits

worldwheeler wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.
I have a AMD64 bit acer running a 32bit OS
These are the files I get from the bios extract.
x64 folder
ABVXD.VDX
CP2A_104.EXE
flash.sys
readme.txt

inside the x64 folder:
CP2A_104.exe
flash64.system
settings.ini
WFlash.DAT

Now just to be sure which CP2A_104 file should I use and what should it be renamed? Also do I need to put the flash file on the USB stick aswell?

I have found this http://www.fixya.com/support/t3663874-corrupt_bios_acer_aspire_5535
But I am unsure of the rename as I have AMD turion 64 x2 with a 32bit OS.

Seems that you have missed my link.

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Seems that you have missed my link.

Hi, I have the CP2A-104.rom file from your link, thank you.
should I used that with the flash64 or flash file from the acer download.

the model number on the acer plate on the back says MS2254

so would I rename the rom file MS2AT32.fd or MS2AT64.fd?

NiftyDigits

worldwheeler wrote: »

Hi, I have the CP2A-104.rom file from your link, thank you.
should I used that with the flash64 or flash file from the acer download.

the model number on the acer plate on the back says MS2254

so would I rename the rom file MS2AT32.fd or MS2AT64.fd?

I assume that you will be running a BIOS recovery, not a BIOS Flash, so you may not need a flash file.
Bit busy at the moment, so haven't had the time to look into the BIOS recovery procedure for that model.

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

I assume that you will be running a BIOS recovery, not a BIOS Flash, so you may not need a flash file.
Bit busy at the moment, so haven't had the time to look into the BIOS recovery procedure for that model.

Hi, I have looked online for black screen of death recovery for Acers. There seems to be a lot of trouble with this make. And from what I have read and videos on you tube they suggest repairing the bios with a flash over.
Is all I need the ROM file renamed to a .fd file and no flash file on a USB stick?

Thanks for your time. Would you be able to come back with answer later, regarding the 32 or 64 figures in the re-naming.

NiftyDigits

worldwheeler wrote: »

Hi, I have looked online for black screen of death recovery for Acers. There seems to be a lot of trouble with this make. And from what I have read and videos on you tube they suggest repairing the bios with a flash over.
Is all I need the ROM file renamed to a .fd file and no flash file on a USB stick?

Thanks for your time. Would you be able to come back with answer later, regarding the 32 or 64 figures in the re-naming.

Had a cursory look which suggests that for the flash you will need to create a Crisis Recovery disc using a USB Flash drive. Indicated here

I'll have a look later to see if there is a more simple Phoenix BIOS recovery procedure for that model.

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Had a cursory look which suggests that for the flash you will need to create a Crisis Recovery disc using a USB Flash drive. Indicated here

I'll have a look later to see if there is a more simple Phoenix BIOS recovery procedure for that model.

Hi, I have read through that thread and apart from apply a heatgun to the GPU I have done all the physical stuff. Removed the HDD, WiFicard, RAM. Removed the heat sink and fan unlocked CPU and relocked it. Turned on and allowed to heat up. Shut down and reassembled. Turned on and it all worked, ran checkdisk and restarted. all fine. Then shut down and tried the power button start, nothing. Little whir from the fan and HDD, clicks from the DVD drive then nothing, black screen.
The files mentioned in the post BIOS.WPH, I cannot find. Acer don't seem to have them.
Online fixes say extract file from the acer bios download with winrar. I extracted them with whatever extractor is loaded on my windows vista Compaq laptop. I don't expect that a different extractor would give different files from the same zipped download.
It does seem like there is an awful lot of Acers going down with bios problems. Maybe landfill is all they are good for. Mankinds ability to turn resources into junk landfill is quite astonishing. Still longevity and serviceability doesn't keep the money mounting up for the corporations.

Nearly all the recovery post state rename the .fd file. This file is simply not in the acer bios download.
Thanks for your help. If you find a solution please let me know.

NiftyDigits

How is it going? Have you made any progress?

The BIOS.WPH is on the Crisis Disk

Anyway, you need to create a Bootable USB drive(do you know how to do this?)

I've put together a package for you with instructions. You can download it from here

Once you have created the Recovery Drive, follow the instructions here: http://s9.postimage.org/pbwd86kmn/Capture.jpg

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

How is it going? Have you made any progress?

The BIOS.WPH is on the Crisis Disk

Anyway, you need to create a Bootable USB drive(do you know how to do this?)

I've put together a package for you with instructions. You can download it from here

Once you have created the Recovery Drive, follow the instructions here: http://s9.postimage.org/pbwd86kmn/Capture.jpg

Hi, I must admit that I am unsure of making such a crisis recovery, any instructions would be helpful, thank you.