I made an account just to write this, since I found the thread helpful but lacking info on my exact model. I had two Acer laptops, different models but very similar (5252 and 5742Z), that bricked. They both exhibit the same behaviour exactly, turning them on lights the blue power LED in the top left but the screen remains off. The HDD light never even blinks. The CD/DVD drive will seem to check for a disk but would not load anything, even bootable stuff. External monitor showed no signal. It would remain in this state forever if you let it, sometimes the fan seemed to blow a bit but since nothing was doing anything I suppose there was little heat. Clearing excess charge had no effect.
5 minutes later and the 5252 is back and good as ever. Here is what I did, as detailed as possible though I don't know what matters and what doesn't:
1. Got a USB stick (16GB Maxell), quick formatted to FAT32 in Windows 8.1.
2. Downloaded "Firmware_bios_Acer_Aspire_5010-5253G.rar", extracted just XEWxx214.FD from the DOS directory of the 5252 BIOS package.
3. Copied that and only that to the USB.
4. Removed battery, all cables including power, and any disc from the DVD drive. Stuck the USB in the right-hand port farthest from the screen.
5. Held down Fn and Esc keys while I put the AC power cord back in. Pressed power, still holding the keys down, then released them a few seconds after that.
That was all I did. The fan came on fully, and the light on my USB stick showed activity. Screen stayed dead. After about 10 seconds, it turned off and I said "fuck" and took a drink. Then it came on and did the same thing again, USB flashing again. Then it rebooted and I was staring at the BIOS screen and moments later the bootloader. Seems I have a lot of updates to install.
So now I am going to try the same thing (different drivers) with the 5742Z. When it was given to me it was already a brick, they had taken in to a shop and been told first that the screen was dead, and then after buying a new screen (I have that too) they were told the motherboard was dead. If this one is indeed dead, does anyone know what I could do with the screen?
