Acer 5552g corrupted bios

[Razeh]

Hello.

Excuse me if I'm posting in the wrong section but I'm in need of help and I'm not sure what to do anymore.

My Acer 5552g laptop died yesterday. It doesn't show anything on the screen and only one led is lighting up: the one that has a little lightbulb icon above. The cooling fan starts for a few seconds but then it goes into idle. I haven't done anything special with the laptop prior to it malfunctioning. I've just shut it down (it told me that some background software needs to be closed first but I was in a hurry and clicked the force shutdown button) and the next day, when I tried to turn it on it started behaving like I mentioned.

I suspect it might be a corrupted BIOS problem even tho I haven't tried installing a new version of BIOS on it. I have tried the recovery mode technique which involves pressing FN and Esc and then powering it on while having a BIOS.fd file on an USB stick but that didn't work. Today I have disassembled it in order to find and take out the CMOS battery but I am not able to locate it.

I have attached some pictures of the motherboard. Maybe you can help me find the CMOS battery. Or suggest a solution.

Thank you very much!

Spoiler

 

[WR2]

Upper right corner - doesn't that look like a round silver battery to you?

 

[WR2]

Today I have disassembled it in order to find and take out the CMOS battery but I am not able to locate it.

Do you actually need to take the battery out?
You might be able to just short the CMOS battery contact points to reset the BIOS to default settings.
What does the manual call for you to do?

 

[WR2]

My Acer 5552g laptop died yesterday. It doesn't show anything on the screen and only one led is lighting up: the one that has a little lightbulb icon above. The cooling fan starts for a few seconds but then it goes into idle.

Does it seem your laptop is actually booting up, apart from the blank screen?

If so your LCD backlight might have failed.

If you hold the screen close to a bright light or shine a flashlight on it - can you make out faint images?

 

[Razeh]

I'm not sure I know how to short up the CMOS battery contact ports. Also I have no idea where the battery is on the MB.

The LCD doesn't light up at all. Also... there are no sounds coming out of the laptop so I doubt it's an LCD failure since I never had any problems with it. On a previous HP laptop the LCD malfunctioned but the problem slowly progressed.

 

[WR2]

Did you look at the picture I put in above?

 

[Razeh]

Didn't see your first reply. It looked like a battery but as I haven't seen many MB's in my life, I decided to not tinker with it before asking for some advice. Also... in the service manual it shows a picture with a removable battery.

 

[WR2]

And it told you how to remove the battery?

 

[WR2]

Wait! didn't the service manual also show you the position of the battery?

 

[WR2]

And I suppose the service manual didn't say anything about CMOS, RTC or BIOS reset procedures?

 

[Razeh]

Here is a screenshot from the service manual.

Also there's some info about how to instal a new BIOS by using a special recovery method. While the laptop is unplugged it tells me to press Fn+Esc and then plug it in and turn it on. Also before turning it on I should have an USB stick with the BIOS file on it. In my case, the name should be BIOS.fd. I have tried that but it didn't work.

 

[Razeh]

Here's the step by step recovery method I have tried using various forums for tips about how to do it. I tried different names for the FD file as well as making a smaller partition on my USB stick since some recommend using a storage device that has less than 2 gig's. I wasn't able to write the file on a CD since I'm using a netbook now.

 

[WR2]

I'm not convinced you had a BIOS problem in the first place.
It's about the last thing I would have thought would fail.
I always suggest a BIOS reset before you move on to a BIOS replacement.

 

[Razeh]

I see. Well what do you think the problem might be? I have googled my issue and everything pointed towards an corrupted BIOS problem.

 

[WR2]

My Acer 5552g laptop died yesterday. It doesn't show anything on the screen and only one led is lighting up: the one that has a little lightbulb icon above.

That LED light pattern might very well be a diagnostic code explaining what the problem might be.

Does your manual have a section on troubleshooting / diagnostic codes?

 

[Razeh]

I can't seem to find any info about that. I did however find something about "Clear CMOS jumper". Should I try that?

 

[WR2]

That's the same as taking the battery out.
It should reset your BIOS back to default in case there had been a change.

 

[Razeh]

Before trying that... is there anything else I could do before starting to reassemble my laptop?

 

[WR2]

I've just shut it down (it told me that some background software needs to be closed first but I was in a hurry and clicked the force shutdown button) and the next day, when I tried to turn it on it started behaving like I mentioned.

Usually, when you force a shut down like this (when you shouldn't) the only thing at risk is your Windows installation being corrupted. It really should not have been an issue with your hardware or firmware (BIOS).

On the other hand your screen not displaying anything is a hardware symptom.

Of course you tried reaching the BIOS using F2 at power on and that failed too?

 

[WR2]

After the problem started, could you tell if the HDD would spin up and keep spinning till you forced the shutdown?