Aspire Xc-605

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Janita Locklin

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Aug 3, 2024, 3:38:14 PM8/3/24

to prinanluzo

Today, I was upgrading the HDD to SSD and noticed the SSD didnt show up in the BIOS so I couldn't boot from it. I swapped back and did a BIOS update from P11.A2 to P11.B4. Everything seemed fine, I rebooted and was able to get back into Windows 8.1 from the HDD.

Now however, when I try to start it up, the PC turns on and the fan goes on, but I get one long beep and thats it. PC and fan stay on until I press the button again. No display or anything. Monitor is plugged in to the VGA port on the mobo (tried the HDMI as well though).

anyways, the issue was directly related to a failed bios update, the acer bios update gui is terrible software, do not rely on it! always use the command prompt or direct bios update method for best safety.

once my pc was bricked, i tried all the normal steps to attempt recovery from usb, this did not work! from my research, acer is not very good with these types of recoveries. i obtained a dump of the bios for the xc-605 online and programmed it to the chip manually. once complete, my pc was fixed!

do not attempt to flash the bios file from acer directly, this will NOT work!! the bios file is missing some parts known as the ME region which contains some specific mobo and system data. best bet is to find a clean full dump online for your system or to use your backup to build a working bios dump (takes some skill above my knowledge level)

i purchased a CH341A device from amazon (cheap) and used a program called NeoProgrammer to manually reprogram the chip. you can find guides for these easily online. basic steps follow below (please do your own research as well as this is a fragile process already):

fingers-crossed if all went well it should work. in my case all was good but the pc still didnt start. i found out the bios file from acer is incomplete and needed an actual dump of a bios from a working machine to flash (i didnt have a backup so had to find online which was a bit tough). once i flashed the dump bios from a different pc, i was up and running! in my case, the acer bios was 4mb and the chip was 8mb, so something was missing. the full dump i obtained was the perfect 8mb and contained all the necessary data for the system to post and start up again.

Have you also checked the SATA cables and PSU cables connections and if they work and/or are connected properly, as that could be a problem also. As the symptoms that you are getting with a long booting process of the mechanical OEM HDD is of a drive that is damaged and/or not making a connection, which mechanical drives suffer from extensively and their data can get damaged, especially a boot drive.

I know that its always great to be smart retrospectively but, you should have first cloned the mechanical boot HDD OS to the SSD drive first and then done all the upgrades of the ram, updated bios (as a bios update should not have been done) try to upgrade the bios to the last Version: P11-B4Ltitled "Modify version for Capsule update function." as that could improve some aspects of your desktop to boot.

The SSD is a 1TB Samsung 870 EVO, the SSD works fine as well, and has been tested in terms of booting etc. on another machine. However, it did not appear in the BIOS at all and I couldn't boot from it initially in this computer which prompted me to do an update on the BIOS.

The OEM HDD does not have any issues in terms of data or booting capabilities. The drive works fine and I tested booting from it in another PC (after this issue) and it worked well and got me into Windows 8.1.

Regarding the BIOS version, are you sure we should use the P11-B4L? I did do some research initially and the general info was the 'L' versions are for Linux boxes and to also stick with the same category of BIOS as original. Since it was originally P11.A2 (not P11.A2L) I used the P11.B4 (non-L) version.

The problem right now does not seem to be directly SSD or HDD related, when I turn on the computer it powers on and I get one long beep and that's all, unfortunately. The fan turns on and the light is solid, but no display or anything on the screen to further troubleshoot. I have also tried booting without the RAM and with/without the SSD/HDD, but I get the same issue.

I do think it must be a failed BIOS update, but i feel like there must be some way to restore the BIOS rather than resoldering a new chip (which i have 0 experience with and would likely do more damage lol)

It is unlikely that you'll get the proper dump on these forums. Accordingly I suggest making a request on bios mods forums. Or perhaps trying to find a pre-programmed chip. They are rather large surface mounts that can be changed with ordinary pencil tip tools.