BSOD a few hours after starting laptop for the las few days

Machine is an ACER 5740G laptop.

- 7 months ago I've installed Windows 7 64. Drivers from here: Download Drivers and Manuals | Acer Official Site
(insert 5740g in the search box and select the aspire 5740g to see the drivers)
- 3 months ago my laptop won't display anything. I've connect it to an external monitor and managed to find the problem: the well known atikmdag atikmpag ati driver issue. Uninstalled and installed the driver and it worked....
- for 2 weeks. Same problem, only now it was a bit harder to solve. Decided to go for a clean installation of Windows 7. Installed the same drivers as above except for the VGA one. Instead of the one recommended there I went for the latest from the AMD website, a generic Radeon GD 5000 series driver. The old one was specifically for my video card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470.
- soon after installing Windows and drivers I get constant BSODs. I've expanded the atikmpag, atikmdag files with cmd thinking they were the cause. Still BSOD.

I believe the problem might be the old drivers (they seem to be from 2009) conflicting with new Windows files. Should I get newer drivers from elsewhere?

Hello eric77 and welcome to 7forums! :)

There is a BIOS update for your laptop model and I would recommend that you update it especially when it says that 1.22 updates the ATI VBIOS and that might be why you have had problems with the graphics. Please go here and enter 5740g into the model:
Download Drivers and Manuals | Acer Official Site

And click the BIOS/Firmware tab and download the latest file.

And here is a guide on how to update the BIOS:
How do I update the bios on my notebook with a bios that uses winphlash%3F

Cheers, Boris :)

Hi eric77.

if the exe failed, you can use the DOS way which means you'll have to put the files from the DOS folder onto a USB stick and update the BIOS that way. Here's a video on how to make a bootable USB stick:


Cheers, Boris :)

eric77 said:

What should I expect, will it be more complicated than press x key to continue, etc? Never did a bios update.

I'm sorry but what do you mean exactly?

Hi eric.

I should have linked you this earlier had I found it:

MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive - Create

eric, do you remember the name of the BIOS file that you copy and pasted onto the usb stick?

I'm pretty sure that is the one you should put in there.