Acer Aspire bios does not recognize hard drive or dvd

[nomad108]

Hello.
Have an Acer Aspire 5100, which periodically ( much more as of late) will not boot, and going to the bios to look at stuff, the Hard drive and the dvd drive are not even mentioned... other times it will just boot normally. have windows 7 on this one.
already tried many things ( re-install windows, install another windows, change HD, flash bios, re-seat processor etc) lately out of desperation I found out by sheer coincident, that if I bend the laptop a little ( thous bending the mobo), it will recognize all, and start just fine. as long as I hold it this way it will work, as soon as I release it, it will freeze and die on me.
already opened all panels, and looked if there were any cracks on the mobo, but none were discovered.

BTW for some reason the bios says this is an aspire 3100, and the body, and sticker says it is a 5100...
I also looked up to sell it on e-bay and see at least 5 of them sell as is for the same exact reason...
any one has any idea's?,
anyone can help before i get rid of it?
Thanks.

 

[Tmagic650]

Look for a bios update for your model on the Acer support site, and update the bios

 

[raybay]

Before you update the BIOS, take a look at what Acer says the System is... On different models, this is found differently, but by pressing one of these once per second as soon as you depress the <ON> button, you will get access to a number of low resolution screens with descriptive technical information: <F1>, <F2>, <F5>, <F10>, <F11>, or <F12>
The screen will tell you what is the currently installed BIOS. You can then look for the BIOS update for that computer. It what you have is the most recent BIOS, then download and attempt to reinstall that BIOS, following all Acer directions for doing so.

What you describe is found too often in Acer computers... but usually can be worked out as above. If the BIOS will not install over itself, use <SAFE MODE> and try again.

 

[triztan]

are the hard drive and dvd drive ide? If so are they the same cable?

 

[mailpup]

If you have to bend the laptop and thus the motherboard to get it work, you either have a short or an open circuit. It would seem you would have to replace or repair the mobo. Perhaps the case is warped slightly and is bending the motherboard. You could try loosening the mobo mounting screws to relieve the tension and see what happens. If that happens to fix it, you could use paper washers to act as spacers with the applicable screws to get the mobo to lay flat without tension. Just a thought.

 

[nomad108]

Acer Aspire Bios not recognize hard drive or dvd

Thanks all for the replies.
Triztan.. This is a laptop, so there are no cable connections.
Tmagic & Raybay... Your suggestion looks like a good Idea, and I will try that tomorrow, and post a reply.
Mailpup, your reply seems to be the correct one ( I REALLY HOPE SO,,) I will try to open up all the screws holding the MOBO to place. The laptop in general seems to be straight and not bent, but maybe loosening it up will help.
Looks like this is a common problem with this Acer as I have seen a few of the same model sells for scrap on e-bay with exactly the same problem..
Just wondering if Acer screwed this one up...

 

[nomad108]

Well... Just opened up the whole bottom of it, and released the screws... looked at everything, and could not see anything wrong... Noticed that the cmos battery was replaced at some point in time ( weldings are not factory made) and decided to place some strong hold on it, and what da ya know.... It worked... Laptop is now fully operational and starts and works just fine.
Looks like there was a lightly loose connection on that cmos battery, and when I bented the mobo it made a good connection on it..

Thanks all for your input. I hope other people with the same problem get it done.

 

[raybay]

Thank you for taking the time to update us.

 

[Tedster]

yep- a bad or failing battery can cause all kinds of weird things!