Acer 4520 boot error

[legrosa]

Hello,
My laptop after pressing the power button will get a partial way through the boot sequence and then shut down. It will then automatically start up again and go through the whole cycle over and over. I have tried a bootable CD and USB drive in order to interupt the cycle and re-flash the BIOS. I had no luck with this. I do not have a diskette drive. The only thing to an affect was to press FN f2 during start up. This would limit the re-boots to 1 and leave the power light on but with no affect on the loading of windows (vista) etc. During the partial boot the hard drive indicator and other indicators will flash.

Can anybody suggest a way to interupt this cycle or an easy to update the BIOS. I am asssuming here that the BIOS is the thing that has been ccorrupted.

Thanks in advance

 

[frozenlead]

How far does your notebook boot to? If it starts to load windows before rebooting, your BIOS is fine.

 

[legrosa]

I can't really tell as nothing appears on the screen at all.

 

[frozenlead]

So your BIOS fails POST. You have some sort of hardware malfunction preventing the computer from starting. Plug the machine into an external monitor, remove the hard disk and one stick of memory, then try and boot.

Of course, don't try this if the machine is under warranty.

 

[legrosa]

okay I shall try this but you will have to wait for few day for the results as I am currently away from the machine. Thanks - will let you know.

 

[legrosa]

So your BIOS fails POST. You have some sort of hardware malfunction preventing the computer from starting. Plug the machine into an external monitor, remove the hard disk and one stick of memory, then try and boot.

Of course, don't try this if the machine is under warranty.

Hello I tried the external monitor and removal of the hard drive to no effect. Unfortunately I forgot the removal of the memory stick. Where I am going with this test ?