I was able to backup my A3 bios after loading XP onto the system and using winflash that came with the A3 update. Unfortuantly that knowledge doesn't do anyone much good without a system with XP and the A2 bios.
If you don't send it back, my advice would be to downgrade your BIOS.
What is your technician's reasoning for this:
"If you don't send it back, my advice would be to downgrade your BIOS."
What do you expect to accomplish for doing that, based upon what you know so far?
Because it was working prior to the BIOS being upgraded. If you knew anything at all about troubleshooting, you would know that if you make a change and something breaks to attempt reverting the change to see if it un-breaks.
Fastvince just sent me a copy of the a02 bios and as we all suspected, it fixed the hdmi audio issue.
Fastvince, You my friend, Are awesome, Thank you Soooo Very much. The A2 bios fixed my bios, And since I use 11n wireless for everything, I wont be changing it again anytime soon.
Good news on the bios. My x1200 that I got from BestBuy hasn't seemed to have any problems so far (as purchased), though I haven't used it enough to know if I had the network problem.
Been able to play ripped Blu Ray (mkv) on it using Core, BS Player, and Media Portal and they all look great, no tearing or anything.
My big problem is audio. I got a new Samsung 650 at the same time, and I was thinking I could just run the HDMI from the Acer to the tv (which does work fine), and then the optical out from the tv into my Onkyo receiver. The problem I have is that the tv only outputs stereo via the optical when it's using a HDMI source, which leaves me with two options. 1) trying to hook audio from the Acer to the Onkyo, or 2) running the HDMI through the receiver (I'd have to buy a new one that supports that)
The lack of SPDIF out on the Acer is by far my biggest disappointment. I've seen posts on here about hooking a port up to the motherboard, but I haven't read that anyone's actually tried it. People mention the $30 Turtle usb, but that you'd have to switch to Vista 32 and lose out on half your RAM.
I was wondering if anyone has tried using a Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster X-Fi 5.1? I see that it has x64 support (via the MS Compatibility list), it runs USB 2.0 and has optical and coaxial out. Looks like it's about $60, but that beats a new $300 receiver.