Hi All, First of all I new here, If this the wrong place I posted this, my apologies. I have the above listed desktop PC, windows did a firmware update on its own and bricked the BIOS. Contacted Acer support and they aren't willing to help as it just ran out of warranty. I believe its got AMI bios as its got a label on the motherboard saying AMI Aptio. Did some googling and followed instructions for AMI bios recovery to no avail. Tried created a Crysis Boot disk but no luck either. Appreciate if you fine folks know of any others tricks that I can try to get this machine back to life. Not in a position to splash on a new PC, so will highly appreciate any help.
Please provide as much information as possible the exact make and version of the motherboard processor year and month of computer and motherboard release with which OP system this computer was released on what was the original BIOS version and whether any successful BIOS updates have been made in the meantime. PS if you say AMI Aptio, then what version In short, as much basic information as possible. We cannot restore anything if we do not know what we want to restore. PS One more question. Why do you think the BIOS is corrupted or "bricked" as You said. Did you use Bitlocker, ie was this drive or partition was Bitlocker protected where the OS has been installed? If you used Bitlocker and UEFI boot, test whether your computer is able to boot into the BIOS menu, ie open the BIOS menu. When the BIOS menu appears, you can make changes to the BIOS more easily. But if you see a screen asking you to enter a Bilocker unlock or recovery code, there is probably nothing wrong with your BIOS. You just need to restore the Bitlocker code. In either case, the computer will not start the operating system and you will only see a black screen in the best case. However, opening the BIOS menu is possible. If it is not possible even to open the BIOS menu, it is more complicated.
@blackslash OK, thank You. Try now boot it into the BIOS menu. Do You know how? It's even better if You remove at all hard drive and all other connected devices. I'll try to help You as much as I can. If my mind ends, maybe somebody know, how to go on. I think, it's possible to restore/repair and everything goes well.
When I turn on the machine, nothing comes up. Just a black screen. I have tried the key combos thinking I might get lucky but nothing, just a black screen. No Acer logo or anything.
I never knew that was even possible. I tried the key combinations as below F2 Shift + F2 fn + F2 Esc + Shift + Del + F2 I also tried the same combination for F10 because by memory I used F10 to get into BIOS when it used to work, but no luck.
OK, it should be/must be F2 as I now know, but if You can't get into BIOS menu at all, then it takes some time to find out some more options to reset the default BIOS. For that You may need some more things like empty USB flash drive FAT32 formated and has at least 4GB space. I'll look for more things, what is possible to do, but it may take for a while, because I have some other things to do... If You want to look yourself for tools and methods, do it. Most likely You must restore default BIOS from USB drive or reset default BIOS using third party tools, if You really can't enter into BIOS menu. If you are not a specialist, it would be wise to find some local a specialist or workshop to help you.
I looked online and came across the Crisis boot disk which I tried but did not work also tried the AMI Bios recovery which did not work either.
Have you tried to initiate the BIOS UEFI recovery using the ROM "R01-B4.8M" file renamed to "BIOS.FD" on a FAT32 formatted USB stick?
any updates on this??? I just bought a secondhand and did windows update that decided to update bios unsuccessfully and bricked the pc. i was on R01-A2 and updated to A3 then A4. Windows update decided to give it a newer one and bricked.
I did a lot of reading on this, and apparently BIOS is recoverable by loading the BIOS with a unique file name specific to this model into an empty FAT32 formatted USB drive and using the fn+Esc keys while powering up. But haven't had any luck finding this file name. Tried searching the BIOS using a HEX editior but had no luck.