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Cannot access Acer Aspire V5 BIOS
s2k
Posts: 7,421 Forum Member
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Hi guys, got a Acer Aspire v5-531 here stuck in a reboot loop following a failed update to Windows 8.1. I was planning on refreshing it and if that dosn't work then a normal reinstall. I have a known good Win8 DVD, but the laptop also apparently has a builtin recovery (ALT+F10). The files have already been pulled off the drive by putting it into another PC.
My problem is that no matter what I do I cannot seem to gain access to the BIOS of this bloody thing. When you power the laptop on it gives the Acer splash screen but it does not have the usual "Press F2/F12" message...instead it tries to boot straight into the broken OS. If I put a DVD in it will spin up as if it was going to boot off it but then carry straight on into the broken OS then subsequently crash and reboot.
I have tried so far...
Removal of the hard disk completely - this just gave me a "Operating system not found" message. Still no response from F2 or any of the other usual key combinations and no message to do so. The keyboard is definitely working and I have tried a USB one just in case.
Boot from 2 different sets of Windows 8 DVDs - no luck
Boot from a Windows 7 DVD - nothing
Boot from a Hirens Boot CD - nothing
Mashing ALT+F10 to get the e-Recovery screen - nope.
Mashing F8 hoping to get a Windows safe mode option - nope.
Holding down the power button for 10seconds, disconnect the mains, recconect - apparently this should clear the CMOS but doesn't appear to have made any difference. Frustratingly I was unable to even locate the actual battery. The laptop itself is really poorly designed and required a complete disassembly just to get to the hard disk. I believe the battery is on the underside of the motherboard that I can't actually get to since it is riveted in place.
Clutching at straws now I put in a "foreign" hard disk - again just a "Operating system not found" message (presumably because it wasnt a secure-boot OS) and still no option to get into the BIOS.
I did a little bit of reading up on it and some have said that to get into the BIOS in its default state you need to use an option in Windows 8 and perform a "popper" shutdown procedure. If so this is insane as I don't have a working OS to boot into to do this >:(
Does anyone have any suggestions besides taking a sledgehammer to it? For what its worth I do have full read/write access to the hard disk via another computer. Thanks in advance
My problem is that no matter what I do I cannot seem to gain access to the BIOS of this bloody thing. When you power the laptop on it gives the Acer splash screen but it does not have the usual "Press F2/F12" message...instead it tries to boot straight into the broken OS. If I put a DVD in it will spin up as if it was going to boot off it but then carry straight on into the broken OS then subsequently crash and reboot.
I have tried so far...
Removal of the hard disk completely - this just gave me a "Operating system not found" message. Still no response from F2 or any of the other usual key combinations and no message to do so. The keyboard is definitely working and I have tried a USB one just in case.
Boot from 2 different sets of Windows 8 DVDs - no luck
Boot from a Windows 7 DVD - nothing
Boot from a Hirens Boot CD - nothing
Mashing ALT+F10 to get the e-Recovery screen - nope.
Mashing F8 hoping to get a Windows safe mode option - nope.
Holding down the power button for 10seconds, disconnect the mains, recconect - apparently this should clear the CMOS but doesn't appear to have made any difference. Frustratingly I was unable to even locate the actual battery. The laptop itself is really poorly designed and required a complete disassembly just to get to the hard disk. I believe the battery is on the underside of the motherboard that I can't actually get to since it is riveted in place.
Clutching at straws now I put in a "foreign" hard disk - again just a "Operating system not found" message (presumably because it wasnt a secure-boot OS) and still no option to get into the BIOS.
I did a little bit of reading up on it and some have said that to get into the BIOS in its default state you need to use an option in Windows 8 and perform a "popper" shutdown procedure. If so this is insane as I don't have a working OS to boot into to do this >:(
Does anyone have any suggestions besides taking a sledgehammer to it? For what its worth I do have full read/write access to the hard disk via another computer. Thanks in advance
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I'm not familiar with UEFI stuff so please ignore if it's a stupid suggestion.
If your PC is out of warranty, you could try installing W8 (Ignore registration key) on another hard disk using another PC. Temporarily take out hard disk in this PC , replacing with your new hard disk and install some generic hard disk and screen (VGA), usb2 and perhaps keyboard drivers (download from web).
Then put your new hard disk in your laptop and hope it works. If so, you would then probably need to reinstall the correct drivers. You will probably need to download the correct driver for the WiFi or Ethernet (from another PC) and put on a usb stick and install on pc before you can access web.
Even if the above fails you might be lucky and start up enough to get to your bios.
If so set bios to legacy mode (most will allow this). Then set boot order to USB and/or optical drive before hardisk.
Then you could boot and install Windows 7 and then upgrade to Windows 8.
Tried a (known-good) bootable USB flash drive - seems to ignore it completely
Tried tapping F2, holding F2 and using both FN+F2. None of which seem to work. Worth noting that when I booted without the drive and got the No OS message the screen would flicker after any key press so it was responding to F2 even if it wasnt doing anything with it.
The service manual suggested shorting G2201 and powering on to reset the CMOS. I'm not sure if this has worked or not since I didnt get any warnings about default settings or date/time.
What I should mention is that I don't get any of the usual "Press F2 to enter setup" or "Press F12 for boot options" text appear. All that happens from power on is I get the Acer logo followed by the spiral that I believe is the Win8 secure bootloader contained on the disk. This is leading me to believe that its not actually completely shutdown, but stuck in some kind of resume process and will therfore only look for the win8 bootloader and nothing else.
Oilman, your suggestion sounds crazy but right now i'm running out of straws to clench at so will attempt to give it a go if I can find a spare disk to experiment with. The only issue I can forsee is i'm not sure any of the other systems I have access to support "secure boot" which this acer appears to have frustratingly been set to use by default.
ie in a desktop via a SATA and power cable to spare SATA connector on motherboard or
laptop via USB SATA caddy/enclosure.
Backup any important files from the Acer's HDD to host HDD.
Install Mini-Tool Partition Wizard Free and see if the Recovery Partition is there.
Make a note of which partition is set to Active/Boot.
Right click Recovery Partition. Modify/Unhide/Set Active.
Replace HDD in the Acer and see if it now boots into the Recovery Partition.
This would restore to Factory Settings. Hence, previous advice on saving important files.
This doesn't work on all computers. If it doesn't, put the HDD back in the second computer and use Partition Wizard to reset the original Active partition.
Edit: http://partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
A possibly relevant point I forgot to mention when I originally put the drive in my (Win7) PC alongside the existing drive my BIOS/EFI immediately started trying to boot off it with the dreaded spiral of doom. Thinking about it I couldn't get into the boot menu or BIOS on the PC at this point then either. Is this a secure-boot thing?
What I ended up doing was powering off, leaving the power cable connected to it but disconnect the sata cable, boot into windows 7 then plug in the extra sata cable so it got mounted it as a slave drive.
I removed the hard disk and mounted it on my other PC. Initially I tried RobinOfLoxley's suggestion of changing the active boot partition. There were about 7 or 8 different partitions and no matter what I did I wasn't able to get into the e-Recovery but it did somehow trigger a Windows maintenance screen to appear which allowed me to get to the UEFI options. Not sure if this may have been related to the next step but thought I'd mention it anyway.
From within the maintenance menu I also tried to use the "refresh" option but it failed saying the drive was locked. None of the other recovery options worked either.
I did have a go at oilman's suggestion too but since I don't have a product key it wouldn't allow me to install on the other PC.
I then decided screw it, I had already taken a copy of the data, so I put the hard disk back in my other machine and deleted ALL the partitions making it a completely blank hard disk. When I then put it back in the Acer it sat there for about a minute before it finally caved in and reluctantly agreed to boot off my Windows 8 DVD. At this point i should mention it still wouldn't allow me back into the BIOS to change the priorities around but it is now saying "Press F2 to enter setup" once again following the change in the 2nd paragraph.
I proceeded through the Windows 8 setup (the product key gets auto populated by the BIOS) and did a bog standard install with a single partition... it copied files.. rebooted...automatically installed some drivers ... BOOM.. blue screen with a irq_not_less_or_equal error. At this point the thing was borderline going out the window until I found some actual useful information on the net that blamed the Atheros WiFi card. So I powered it off and removed the card, powered it back on and the remaining part of the setup completed and we now have a booting system once more.
In summary, this is one of the worst laptops I have ever worked on....and I have dealt with a lot of crap computers in my time. The thing is so poorly built and badly designed I was really worried I was going to break it with the repeated manhandling just to perform basic tasks like remove the hard disk. The pointless restrictions on the UEFI/BIOS I'm not sure if they were a fault or what but it certainly made things really awkward. Never the less, at least goes into a stable OS and is now successfully on Windows 8.1. The builtin recovery is completely toast but quite frankly it wasn't any use to begin with if you cant boot into it.
Thanks again for all the help. I am now going to crack open a beer :cool:
I would have copied the recovery partition, just in case, but no matter.
If you make a System Image now, you will in effect have your own clean recovery solution.
Use Macrium or Easeus Todo. Both allow creation of a Boot CD/Recovery media.
You can recover from a set of DVDs or an image on an external HDD.
That would eliminate having to bugger around with the WiFi card and a W8 DVD if you ever wanted a clean install again.
Personally, I keep a clean'ish image and make regular further images to ext HDD instead of making file backups (since images can also be mounted for individual files if needed)
It is best to make winpe 4 backup disks even though that is more effort as the basic Linux based disks don't usually have as good set of drivers and Linux disks do not always restore properly and may not work with your secureboot possible problem.
Also make sure you can reboot with boot with hard disk installed without having to access bios first
Well done.