Bios Help

[venomouspain]

Right, ANY attempt to help me with this would be usefull

 

 

Now the hopeless job

 

The laptop in question, an acer aspire 3660- original parts except for a 160g hdd

 

 

I had windows 7 operating on this, i changed the bios settings and used custom drivers heavily to run this smoothly, but due to a problem with the graphics card drivers i decided to move back to XP

 

 

My laptops disk drive is broken, so i created a USB boot for Windows XP- using the added server packs to enable boot

 

 

During the installation my battery ran out ( rookie mistake) but not after it formatted the HDD leaving me with a blank HDD

 

Now my problem is i reverted the boot back to HDD without realising the HDD had been formatted

 

Obviously it showed a error, and now im stuck because i cannot get back into BIOS to change the usb to the forefront

 

When is tells me to hit F2, it does nothing, but the keyboard still works as i can keep hitting any key to retry when it fails to find a operating system

 

I have tried removing the HDD, and then the bios runs in applicable order, and does find my USB boot, but obviously i cannot install the boot as i have no HDD -.-

 

 

Is there any program or method that i could use which would force BIOS to open at startup?

 

Thanks

 

Note, i do have another laptop with higher specs, so i am able to download said programs to aid in the repair of this one

Edited August 10, 2012 by venomouspain

[tech_guy]

Try pressing the either F12 or the DEL key to see if it gives you the boot menu if you're after trying to boot from CD? Edited August 10, 2012 by tech_guy

[twin--turbo]

access to the bios should not be affected by the HDD/USB drive.

 

Rob

[mac_shinobi]

Another option is to connect the laptop hard drive via a hard drive kit to a working pc to format it as NTFS and put it back in the laptop and try again. However as above the hard drive shouldn't effect going into the bios

[venomouspain]

Hey tech_guy, ill give that a try now man cheers

 

twin--turbo, im not saying thats the cause, im just saying either way the i cant actually access bios as f2 is no longer allowing me to access it

 

mac_shinobi, ill give that a go aswell cheers mate, at the moment the hdd was partioned as FAT32, so ill give it a try now

[mac_shinobi]

Hey tech_guy, ill give that a try now man cheers

 

twin--turbo, im not saying thats the cause, im just saying either way the i cant actually access bios as f2 is no longer allowing me to access it

 

mac_shinobi, ill give that a go aswell cheers mate, at the moment the hdd was partioned as FAT32, so ill give it a try now

 

Only need a hard drive kit if it is laptop IDE , if it is sata then you should just be able to connect it directly to a spare sata and data ports on a desktop pc ( i have done this a number of times )

 

When you press F2 do you get any message ie access denied or anything ? Also is it definately the F2 key, not Delete or F1 or some other key to get into the bios ?

[venomouspain]

Only need a hard drive kit if it is laptop IDE , if it is sata then you should just be able to connect it directly to a spare sata and data ports on a desktop pc ( i have done this a number of times )

 

When you press F2 do you get any message ie access denied or anything ? Also is it definately the F2 key, not Delete or F1 or some other key to get into the bios ?

 

 

Yeah its a IDE HDD, its pretty old lol, and where would i pick up a decent hard drive kit? any online links mate?, wouldn't know what im looking for

 

And nothing, it shows Press [F2] to access bios, and when pressed nothing happens whatsoever, it just finishes loading and then tells me that the NTFS has not been found and to hit any key to retry

 

Note that the F2 button did work before and just after the format, as i used it to select boot from HDD just before this happened -.-

 

I do have another IDE HDD with Windows XP, which i tried to use but the error message changes from NTFS missing, to Operating System Not Found(Even though this does work on its original laptop and when using a IDE - SATA converter on my new laptop

 

 

And i did try using the IDE - Sata convertor to connect it to my mates desktop PC, but for some reason the PC would not detect any trace of it actually being there ( times like that i want to punch the thing)

 

And Cheers tech_guy, but no other button on my keyboard or a usb keyboard works to get me into BIOS, including using the Fn button, i have tried them all, except for combinations, in with Ctrl+Alt+Delete simply restarts my laptop

Edited August 11, 2012 by venomouspain

[mac_shinobi]

I had one similar to this ( normally look on amazon.co.uk )

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/E-Solution-USB-2-0-SATA-Cable/dp/B0040XGGHE/ref=sr_1_52?ie=UTF8&qid=1344709927&sr=8-52

 

You can get them for about £12 upwards, the one above is about £22 I think

[venomouspain]

Yeah man, ill keep browsing for abit though, im loath to spend money on such a old laptop, but its less than i was expecting so cheers mate

[mac_shinobi]

Yeah man, ill keep browsing for abit though, im loath to spend money on such a old laptop, but its less than i was expecting so cheers mate

 

 

The one I had was about £10 or £12 and was in 3 pieces instead of 2 or 1.

 

Usb cable which was directly connected to a plastic block ( which had the laptop IDE / Normal IDE and a sata connector ), had an external Mains lead / block which afaik output about 5v dc and had a normal IDE to SATA power adaptor cable and then a normal SATA 2 Lead. Been well worth it as originally I thought the same as yourself oh don't want to spend too much on it as thought I would only use it for just the one drive originally, turns out I used it for other things ie connecting optical drives externally, recovering data from family computers etc etc.

 

Need a soldering iron to fix the one I have now as the 3 wires that connect the usb lead to the plastic block has come apart from the pcb board.

[Arthur]

You can get them for about £12 upwards, the one above is about £22 I think

... or £3.95 to £7.35 on eBay?

[venomouspain]

Ahhhh, found a solution

 

I took my laptop apart first to double check the keyboard, and secondly to check the disc drive

 

The keyboard had nothing wrong as far as im aware, no rips in the slide and no burn marks/loose parts on the soldering, so still unable to use F2 to get into BIOS

 

I had more luck with my disc drive, after checking it out i noticed the metal adjoining the connection was warped out a little, which meant the connection was not fully plugged in, after a few bends with a micro screwdriver it fell into place, and my laptop now reads it

 

I then downloaded a program called PLop, which when burnt to disc allows the user to specify a Bootable object, then saves it to BIOS, overriding the default(or set) boot,

 

Now that my disc drive works, i unplugged my HDD, allowing my laptop to go to the PXE enviroment, allowing boot from disc, then changed it to boot from disc, and used my windows 7 disc with my HDD plugged back in

 

Now in the process of putting XP to disc then repeating this process lmao

 

 

But still, due credit to

 

tech_guy

Arthur

and more so mac_shinobi who's method would have worked perfectly if i used said item

 

Cheers people

Edited August 12, 2012 by venomouspain