I have a customer's computer that isn't POST'ing, nor does it give out any beep codes under any circumstances. Total black screen. The drives and fans are powering up, and all the psu voltages look good. I've powered it up barebones with no change. At this point, I have to assume that either the BIOS is corrupted or BIOS chip has failed. I think I'm going to give a new BIOS chip a try, before hunting down a motherboard, for which the manufacturer (Acer) has been no help. This machine is only just over a year old, and of course, out of warranty. Do any of you have experience with replacing BIOS chips, and does this situation sound like a corrupted BIOS to you?
Corrupted BIOS / BIOS chip replacement
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PatrickB
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Thank goodness I haven't needed it yet, but there are some resources and methods listed here:
http://www.wimsbios.com/faq/howtorecoveracorruptbios.jsp
-- Patrick B.
http://www.wimsbios.com/faq/howtorecoveracorruptbios.jsp
-- Patrick B.
Interesting. Thanks for that link Patrick. Now if I can find a floppy disk around here - I haven't used any for at least five years - still have a drive though.
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NYJimbo
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I really wish there was a sure fire way to know if the BIOS is the culprit. I mean you could rip the unit apart, remove the BIOS chip, flash a new one yourself with something like a Batronix burner and then reinstall, but thats alot of work. So many things can go wrong on a motherboard and each of those things leaves the machine in the same state you are seeing this machine in now.
B Trevathan
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Have you ruled out everything else?
Have you checked the CPU or RAM? What if its something wrong with the motherboard like a bad capacitor?
Have you checked the CPU or RAM? What if its something wrong with the motherboard like a bad capacitor?
atlanticjim
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I have had similar problems and solved them.
Look for ANYTHING that might be causing a short on the mobo, and that means removing EVERYTHING and all connectors to switches and other items, attach a known good power supply. Boot naked and wait for beeps. . if you have any beeps, then you have some sort of bios, next on piece of ram and the video and see what you've got. (this is the method whereby I found a bad power switch that was shorted, another time found a broken USB socket.)
Next, if you don't get a bios screen, reflash the bios blind. That is, using a floppy or USB thumbdrive, reflash the bios without seeing anything on the screen. On some boards there will be a jumper to prepare the bios for a blind flash (for example the Intel Recovery Bios). It is a (minor) thrill to watch the floppy spin for a while or just look at a black screen and hope, then get a beep off the board and see a fresh bios screen.
These have been some of my most rewarding fixes. Any damned software can be upgraded, debugged, reloaded. The nuke and pave is always in our back pocket. But the down and dirty hardware diagnosis, step by step troubleshooting I find to truly test my skills (and set me apart from the rest of the intermediate techs out there).
Some links for you:
Intel® Desktop Boards - No Boot Wizard
Desktop Boards - Troubleshooting system boot issues
Intel Recovery BIOS instructions in PDF format or watch the video
Look for ANYTHING that might be causing a short on the mobo, and that means removing EVERYTHING and all connectors to switches and other items, attach a known good power supply. Boot naked and wait for beeps. . if you have any beeps, then you have some sort of bios, next on piece of ram and the video and see what you've got. (this is the method whereby I found a bad power switch that was shorted, another time found a broken USB socket.)
Next, if you don't get a bios screen, reflash the bios blind. That is, using a floppy or USB thumbdrive, reflash the bios without seeing anything on the screen. On some boards there will be a jumper to prepare the bios for a blind flash (for example the Intel Recovery Bios). It is a (minor) thrill to watch the floppy spin for a while or just look at a black screen and hope, then get a beep off the board and see a fresh bios screen.
These have been some of my most rewarding fixes. Any damned software can be upgraded, debugged, reloaded. The nuke and pave is always in our back pocket. But the down and dirty hardware diagnosis, step by step troubleshooting I find to truly test my skills (and set me apart from the rest of the intermediate techs out there).
Some links for you:
Intel® Desktop Boards - No Boot Wizard
Desktop Boards - Troubleshooting system boot issues
Intel Recovery BIOS instructions in PDF format or watch the video
TekSiDoT
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You might've done that already and I might have missed it, but did you try resetting the CMOS jumper? I've had multiple occasions of computers doing nothing at all after failing gfx cards / network cards / cpus. Resetting helped most of the time.
