Acer Aspire X1301 BIOS update crashed

Hello gerry and welcome . Mate how old is the machine mate? cos if you have bricked it as you think you have you maybe up for a new one but.....

The other thing is why did you try updating the BIOS? and was this the one you tried updating from Acer Support: Downloads & Support Documents - Desktop / Aspire / Aspire X1301

There are plenty of Googles for that problem and from what I have come across two beeps usually refers to some things in the RAM here are some refs
Computer POST and beep codes

What I would try myself first is to remove the battery lave it for a good hour or so - I have had some IBM jobs that required longer - replace with a new one, reseat the RAM and try again.

I'll keep scratching round in the meantime. Found this if it is of any help but I still think the battery change will narrow it down a bit
http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/Ma...X1301_BOOK.pdf

Hey gerry mate the BIOS is a piece of firmware that is it is not strictly software that can be changed at will. That is it is on it's own chip.

You really need to be so careful when redoing the BIOS as you can flog the board to death so to speak. Take a look at this BIOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now I have known of folks that "flash" the BIOS and wreck it and hence the mobo. So when you went to update the BIOS did it give you any dire warnings?

Try something else now power up and tap rhythmically the F2 key if the BIOS is intact it should start up the BIOS screen. The maker of yours is I am sure Phoenix and should come up with a screen similar to this one.

After that it might be worth a new battery try.

Yes, flashing BIOS can brick the computer if done wrong.

being BIOS stored on a physical chip soldered to the motherboard, if you have some (very very good) soldering skills and you are desperate enough (i.e. try everything and anything you can BEFORE doing this), you can try physically replacing it.
The guys here offer new BIOS chips for sale and a half-decent support. They sold me a couple chips I used to nekro a couple bricked laptops after a failed BIOS update.
Not guaranteed to work, but hey.

Yeah bob done some fairly fine soldering in my time too but this hum the way those things sit down into those sockets and getting it back in without super heating it would be a job and a half eh?

Hot air guns (or heat guns) are more or less the only thing that can do it in a slightly professional way. As long as you are careful to not blow away the other tiny components close to it, anyway.

I know of geeks that managed to replace even friggin soldered processors in netbooks by heat-gunning.

Practicing on some other dead electronic board first is advised.

Sounds like the hdd was dying (they die every now and then), BIOS had nothing to do with it. It wasn't fixable, the HDD had to be replaced.

Still, you can likely avoid wasting money in a new PC and buy just a new naked mobo, as a dead bios does not damage other removable components like processor, RAM, cards and whatnot.

If you want help in figuring out the best replacement motherboard (so you can use the processor/RAM/whatever else of the old mobo and save some cash) just post what these components are. (the processor's name is written on its upper surface, just remove the heat sink/fan and the thermal paste, all else is labeled)

bobafetthotmail said:

Sounds like the hdd was dying (they die every now and then), BIOS had nothing to do with it. It wasn't fixable, the HDD had to be replaced.

Still, you can likely avoid wasting money in a new PC and buy just a new naked mobo, as a dead bios does not damage other removable components like processor, RAM, cards and whatnot.

If you want help in figuring out the best replacement motherboard (so you can use the processor/RAM/whatever else of the old mobo and save some cash) just post what these components are.

Thanks, but I figure a new MB, plus HD will still cost me $250 all in vs $400 for a new PC. This is not a high performance machine, just managing our household. Plus, would I be able to reinstall Win 7 if it's not a MB specific for the Aspre 1301?

Specs are:

AMD Phenom X3 Triple-Core 8400/8450/8600/8650 processor
NVIDIA nForce MCP78
Super-Multi SATA DVD drive
750 Gig HDD

Silly question though, this is a triple core CPU, but new units I'm seeing are double core. But I imagine the newer ones are still better.