9810 Firmware Goofed !! Help Needed

Evening All

In trying to fix a problem with a graphics driver, i have managed to brickr the firmware on the board !!

The laptop starts, then goes to the white Intel Splash Screen, then goes to the intel dos screen (with the hard drives listed) then the laptop switches off. During all this process the hard drive light is on so i am presuming it is spinning.

I changed the firmware from the original version (1.21) to the vista version (2.14) using swinflash, obviusly didnt work too well

So far i have tried to create a bootable usb stick and copied the contents of the 1.21 folder on to stick, this doesnt work (i have changed the boot order)

So the problem is that either

1 - I have created the boot usb dongle wrong
2 - the files i copied on to the dongle need further work

The list of boot files on the usb dongle is (i created these using unetbootin that someone did a video for on google):

ldlinux.sys
menu.c32
syslinux.cfg
ubninit
ubnkern

the files that i then copied (using cut and paste) from the unzipped bios v1.21 that i downloaded from the acer website are:

autorun.inf
mfc42.dll
msvcp60.dll
msvcrt.dll
phlash.ini
phlash.log
phlash9x.vxd
phlashlc.dll
phlashnt.sys
r121.rom
readme.txt
swinflash.exe
winphlash.hlp

Can someone please help, i think the wife is going to use it as a very expensive chopping board if i dont manage to do anything with it.

Thanks for any help and merry chrimbo

 

You need to use WinCris to create a crisis disk. For the 9920G (which is an updated 9810G), an USB flash drive works fine for this purpose, but it is possible that the 9810G will need an USB floppy drive.

 

hi netrolller, thanks for coming back to me

in the bios, it does state boot from "usb dongle" and "usb hdd", do you think it will still need a floppy drive ?

When i downloaded wincris, the only option is to create a 3.5" diskette, how did you manage to create a bootable usb dongle / stick from wincris ?

Thanks again

Jon

 

Hi

Just quick update, i have managed to create a bootable usb driver and now have a simple verison of dos running

I have a directory list and can see the ROM file that i have downloaded from the Acer website but not sure what to do next, its like i need a dos flash program

created the boot able usb flash drive using

Bios-boot-usb-stick - Howto: BIOS-Update per bootable USB-Stick - www.biosflash.com

for anyone looking in the future.

Can anyone give me any advice as to what to do next please ? thanks

 

Getting a bit further down the line for anyone looking in future, i found a program called phlash16.exe that loads in DOS

I start the program and get error

Cannot flash if memory managers (e.g.HIMEM) present

Press any key to exit

anhy advice on what to do next would be greatly appreciated.

 

ok, not sure what happened but the laptop has started to boot in to windows !!

I was pretty close to a solution so i figured i would write it up anyway so that anyone looking again may gleam some knowledge !!

I created a USB stick using

Bios-boot-usb-stick - Howto: BIOS-Update per bootable USB-Stick - www.biosflash.com

follow the instructions on his site, very usefull. this allowed to boot the lappy in dos.


i downloaded the firmware from the acer wesbite

http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...3=Aspire 9810&OS=V10&LC=en&BC=Acer&SC=EMEA_27

i then copied the contents of the unzipped download to the stick

i found in an old acer firmware download a program called Phlash16.exe

When you run the phlash16.exe utility in dos, you do get a gui. mine had a problem because i think it was expected the bios update to be in .wph and the download link above download a .rom

Sorry guys this is as far as i have got with it

Mine started working because i reset the values to default F9 in bios ??? anyway back to the video card driver problem now!

If anyone want to correct this for future users to reboot their lappy's, im more than happy

 

A BIOS reset may easily be why it started working again.

However, you did not use WinCris correctly - for PhoenixBIOS, a crisis disk is very different from a bootable DOS disk.

Also, whether or not you will need a USB floppy drive for *recovery* is completely independent of whether your BIOS can boot from USB flash drives in a *normal* state. I've seen Phoenix BIOSes with flash drive booting but not recovery (e.g. Acer 5920G), and I believe that the other way around also exists. (Plus, some BIOSes can only recover from a floppy drive, while being unable to normally boot from floppy.)