Help, Laptop won't start!!

a

HereToday said:

Seriously? Removing or replacing BIOS chip?
No. There would never be a need for such a procedure, other than to recover from a bad flash.
In this case you would simply run a BIOS recovery if it turns out to be a corrupt BIOS set up.

I actually thought I already posted here on what to do. Must have neglected to press the Post Comment button. Won't bother to do it again. I can imagine the repair shop will take the path of least resistance. Not many know how to do a BIOS recovery.
Has the RAM been removed, cleaned and tested one by one?

FYI: Sorry to shatter your old world view, but yes, corrupt bioses are not that uncommon, but they will try other things first, including the steps what I put there, and your ram removal suggestion. If the bios is corrupt, then they will remove the bios, copy it, find another blank bios image. From the copied bios extract the ME region and add it back to the new bios image and then flash the bios, finally soldering it back. 

Some boards have two bioses. These days, depending on the manufacturer's design other chips may also be programming like some SOCs. Even Dell, for many a year have been sending 1-Wire data down the PSU cable to the laptop from a pre-programed chip in the PSU onto the middle pin. The day of the windowed eprom, and big black Dallas chip are long gone.

If Sea_Shell can get into the bios she should select the 'default' or 'reset' etc. bios function that returns it to a base level, but they did say they are past that point. Hope it is no fix, no fee place.

CoastingHatbox

a said:

HereToday said:

Seriously? Removing or replacing BIOS chip?
No. There would never be a need for such a procedure, other than to recover from a bad flash.
In this case you would simply run a BIOS recovery if it turns out to be a corrupt BIOS set up.

I actually thought I already posted here on what to do. Must have neglected to press the Post Comment button. Won't bother to do it again. I can imagine the repair shop will take the path of least resistance. Not many know how to do a BIOS recovery.
Has the RAM been removed, cleaned and tested one by one?

FYI: Sorry to shatter your old world view, but yes, corrupt bioses are not that uncommon, but they will try other things first, including the steps what I put there, and your ram removal suggestion. If the bios is corrupt, then they will remove the bios, copy it, find another blank bios image. From the copied bios extract the ME region and add it back to the new bios image and then flash the bios, finally soldering it back. 

Some boards have two bioses. These days, depending on the manufacturer's design other chips may also be programming like some SOCs. Even Dell, for many a year have been sending 1-Wire data down the PSU cable to the laptop from a pre-programed chip in the PSU onto the middle pin. The day of the windowed eprom, and big black Dallas chip are long gone.

If Sea_Shell can get into the bios she should select the 'default' or 'reset' etc. bios function that returns it to a base level, but they did say they are past that point. Hope it is no fix, no fee place.

You might be right about a corrupt BIOS .. but I suspect the cause is more trivial. The machine may just need a new CMOS battery. It could equally be a non-bootable hard disk drive. That is why I was trying to get the beep code as it would give an indication as to what the problem is.

a

CoastingHatbox said:

You might be right about a corrupt BIOS .. but I suspect the cause is more trivial. The machine may just need a new CMOS battery. It could equally be a non-bootable hard disk drive. That is why I was trying to get the beep code as it would give an indication as to what the problem is.

I agree. Unless that machine is not in front of you, you cant really get the experience through someone else's eyes, all just ideas and guesses. Hopefully they come back here with the solution.

Sea_Shell

Well the last few posts may as well be written in Swahili...but yes, I will come back with an update.

How technical that update will be will depend on how they describe it to me!!

TBH, If they can fix it, I don't really care what was wrong, technically.

But I will ensure I back up my files more often...or work directly off of usb storage.

J_B

Sea_Shell said:

TBH, If they can fix it, I don't really care what was wrong, technically.

And, if there's the option to fit an SSD (*) then take that option

* = SSD = Solid State Drive, more reliable and much faster than a 'traditional' Hard Drive

HereToday

a said:

HereToday said:

Seriously? Removing or replacing BIOS chip?
No. There would never be a need for such a procedure, other than to recover from a bad flash.
In this case you would simply run a BIOS recovery if it turns out to be a corrupt BIOS set up.

I actually thought I already posted here on what to do. Must have neglected to press the Post Comment button. Won't bother to do it again. I can imagine the repair shop will take the path of least resistance. Not many know how to do a BIOS recovery.
Has the RAM been removed, cleaned and tested one by one?

FYI: Sorry to shatter your old world view, but yes, corrupt bioses are not that uncommon, but they will try other things first, including the steps what I put there, and your ram removal suggestion. If the bios is corrupt, then they will remove the bios, copy it, find another blank bios image. From the copied bios extract the ME region and add it back to the new bios image and then flash the bios, finally soldering it back. 

Some boards have two bioses. These days, depending on the manufacturer's design other chips may also be programming like some SOCs. Even Dell, for many a year have been sending 1-Wire data down the PSU cable to the laptop from a pre-programed chip in the PSU onto the middle pin. The day of the windowed eprom, and big black Dallas chip are long gone.

If Sea_Shell can get into the bios she should select the 'default' or 'reset' etc. bios function that returns it to a base level, but they did say they are past that point. Hope it is no fix, no fee place.

You were too quick to reply. Clearly didn't bother to read and comprehend what I actually wrote.
I did not write that corrupt BIOS are uncommon, I wrote that you do not need to remove the BIOS chip, you can run a BIOS recovery.
Only on boards where Recovery is not possible do you consider replacing the BIOS chip...contrary to what you asserted on this thread. Remember this isn't a place for some general discussion or to show me what you know; it's about a specific device.
The OP needs advice concerning that device, not the changing aspects of BIOS over the years.
So easy to get carried away with a little knowledge, that it's easy to lose sight of reality,
You do not need to remove the BIOS chip in an ACER Aspire 5750; you can simply run a BIOS recovery if the BIOS is corrupt. 

Ask your repairer if he has ever removed a bios, reprogramed it and resoldered it back in, because it sounds like a corrupt bios. If he does not have a soldering iron, and hot air run away

HereToday

Sea_Shell said:

Well the last few posts may as well be written in Swahili...but yes, I will come back with an update.

How technical that update will be will depend on how they describe it to me!!

TBH, If they can fix it, I don't really care what was wrong, technically.

But I will ensure I back up my files more often...or work directly off of usb storage.

It's a problem here sometimes. Easy to forget that we need to be concise for people who have no idea about this stuff.
But thanks for offering to let us know the outcome.

AstonSmith

I think the chances of this being down to a corrupt BIOS are very low. I mean, the bootblock is present and accessible, and the Insyde CMOS setup utility loads.

I put my money on this being a disk problem. Dying, dead or dislodged.

grumpycrab

AstonSmith said:

I put my money on this being a disk problem. Dying, dead or dislodged.

If I was a betting man... it failed while running Excel...  guess disks can die suddenly but sounds like a mainboard issue.  Hopefully we'll find out some time...

Neil_Jones

I would argue that if the BIOS was corrupt it wouldn't be beeping and also you wouldn't get into the setup via F2 either.  Normally you would have had to deliberately do something to blow the bejesus out of it to get it to that state

That being said, on AMIBios there is (or was) a nine beep code which does mean this, but that laptop is an Insyde BIOS - as a general rule on most hardware if there is no graphic output, then it will beep.  Nine times out of ten it will be memory, but a faulty hard drive doesn't generate a beep, you normally get a message on screen.

Of course if you randomly bash enough keys when its gone into BIOS or waiting to past BIOS it will beep incessantly until the buffer/queue passes.  I note from the first post if you kept bashing F8 (which doesn't work in 10 anyway) then it will keep beeping the same number of times you kept pressing it.  My money is also on hard drive.