Acer Aspire v5-531 bios issues

[Dinokiller]

Hi, I've been having some issues with my Acer Aspire v5-531 lately. I was doing a reinstall of Windows 7 Pro but unfortunately forgotten to put the charger in and the battery went flat during installation. Normally I could have just reinstalled again off the disc, but for some reason when pressing F2 to get into bios setup or F12 to get to boot options nothing happens. I've tried almost everything, plugging in an external usb keyboard, holding instead of mashing. I've tried different buttons (I've gone to the bios many times so I know I'm not pressing the wrong button). Nothing seems to be working, so I thought that maybe something was up with the bios and tried updating it (holding fn+esc before turning it on seems to make it update off a flash drive). Even after that nothing is happening. Does anyone know why this is happening, is it a bug in the bios? I've looked around and there seems to be others having the same problem. Bios update can be found here.

[BDMaster]

Hi mate,
Itìs a UEFI Phoenix Bios and very difficult to Recovery !
Try this . . .

Extract Bios File BIOS.cap then prepare an USN Stick Fat32 Formatted
and copy It into then ReBoot and plug the USB Stick into any port and press
the Recovery Acer Keys Fn + ESC . . .


- Shutdown the netbook (notebook)
- Remove all peripheral devices
- Remove battery, Remove AC power cord
- Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds (battery and AC power still out), then release
- Put the USB Memory Stick in the USB port
- Hold "Fn" + "Esc" and plug the AC power cord in
- Now press the power button (whilst still holding Fn + Esc).
Wait until the fan will run, then release "Fn" + "Esc" keys
- The fan will run for about 2-10 minutes and the USB drive activity LED will blink
- I think the netbook rebooted automatically. If it doesn't, unplug the AC power cord once the fan has turned off

The bios should be updated with the modified BIOS, and boot as per normal.

Regards

[Dinokiller]

Hi mate,
Itìs a UEFI Phoenix Bios and very difficult to Recovery !
Try this . . .

Extract Bios File BIOS.cap then prepare an USN Stick Fat32 Formatted
and copy It into then ReBoot and plug the USB Stick into any port and press
the Recovery Acer Keys Fn + ESC . . .


- Shutdown the netbook (notebook)
- Remove all peripheral devices
- Remove battery, Remove AC power cord
- Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds (battery and AC power still out), then release
- Put the USB Memory Stick in the USB port
- Hold "Fn" + "Esc" and plug the AC power cord in
- Now press the power button (whilst still holding Fn + Esc).
Wait until the fan will run, then release "Fn" + "Esc" keys
- The fan will run for about 2-10 minutes and the USB drive activity LED will blink
- I think the netbook rebooted automatically. If it doesn't, unplug the AC power cord once the fan has turned off

The bios should be updated with the modified BIOS, and boot as per normal.

Regards

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately this did not work. I found there are several different versions of the bios on Acer's website. Some claim to be UEIF, some don't. I've tried your method using all of these and got different results.


1. When using the first one the fan did run for a while and then showed "Acer" in green (it's normally white) for about 3 seconds and went to a black screen. It then said the following:

TDK OEM version v0.6 for Shell V1.3.23.3, Build 120806
Copyright © 2011-2012 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.

Read BIOS image from memory.
Initialize Flash module.
Read current BIOS.
Please update to the same type of BIOS (v1.x)

ERROR 235 - OEM check failed from BIOS service!

WARNING: System will shutdown or reboot in 5 seconds!

Press any key to continue.

I pressed a key, and the system continued to boot as normal. Only this time it said "Operaing System not found" where as before it said "BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart".

2. The second one claimed not to be a UEIF bios. When trying this one the screen went black for about a minute and then restarted. Now it had reverted back to saying "BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart".  I also noticed that it only says "Press <F2> to enter setup" now and "Press <F12> for boot options" is no longer there.

All the others produced similar results but F2 still doesn't enter setup.

I've tried to give as much detail as possible here so I hope we can find a solution to this.

[BDMaster]

Hi mate,
We can rewrite bak the Firmware only using the Tools (SPI PGM + Clip) look here :

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-R...5#pid74575

let me know
Regards

[Dinokiller]

Hi mate,
We can rewrite bak the Firmware only using the Tools (SPI PGM + Clip) look here :

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-R...5#pid74575

let me know
Regards

I don't understand, am I meant to follow the guide? It doesn't make sense to me.

[BDMaster]

You have to buy the SPI Programmer and the Clip to make this work on your Laptop
as all locked and only using the Tools is possible the modifies !!!
Regards

[Dinokiller]

You have to buy the SPI Programmer and the Clip to make this work on your Laptop
as all locked and only using the Tools is possible the modifies !!!
Regards

In that case I'll probably just salvage the RAM and HDD then just trash it.