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Recently I partitioned my hard drive, and installed Manjaro Linux alongside Ubuntu 18.04, and updated GRUB as required.

Now I wanted to reformat the partition having Ubuntu and reinstall it, but I could not get into BIOS menu on pressing F2 when the company logo flashed. The system just hangs up with an underscore on the top left side whenever I try to get into BIOS.

Note: Earlier there was no such problem.

dirdi
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Abhishek Dalmia
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1 Answers1

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I found this video of a guy explaining how to enter BIOS on an Acer laptop. At second 33, after the splash screen was displayed and before the BIOS shows up, for a short moment the screen is completely black and only an underscore (right above the u of Menu) is displayed:

Underscore flashing

Is this the moment your laptop stalls? If yes, it seems to me that there is something wrong with your firmware and I would try to re-flash it. Unfortunately Acer does not provide firmware updates via LVFS for your laptop (yet). So my advice to you would be to boot Windows and follow the steps explained in this Acer tutorial.

Follow this tutorial to create a bootable Windows PE USB drive. However, you need a working Windows system (e.g. a VM or another PC) first. Afterwards you have to add an entry to your bootloader to boot it.

If you get an error, telling you that the BIOS you try to install is not newer than the BIOA already installed, you can try this:

  • Unpack the downloaded .exe file using a tool like 7-zip or unrar.
  • Find and open the platform.ini file with a text editor.
  • Search the [Bios_Version_Check] section and replace flag=1 by flag=0
  • Run the InsydeFlash.exe as administrator.
dirdi
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  • Thats exactlly where my laptop stalls! But to solve it, how do I boot Windows? – Abhishek Dalmia Oct 05 '19 at 17:21
  • I have extended my answer. However, if the laptop is still covered by warranty, I would contact Acer support first, since this is definitely not expected behavior. Chances are that they ask you to send it in. – dirdi Oct 05 '19 at 18:54
  • I'll try for the suggested solution if possible, Thanks for your time! – Abhishek Dalmia Oct 06 '19 at 12:10
  • I booted Windows, and for my laptop checked the latest firmware update. But my current version V1.06 is same as the latest update available on acer. What should I do now? – Abhishek Dalmia Oct 09 '19 at 20:36
  • I hove not much experience with Acer, but most manufacturers provide BIOS updates as executable, which can be applied even if the BIOS is already the newest version. If this does not work, try to flash the previous version (V1.05?) and afterwards re-upgrade to V1.06. – dirdi Oct 09 '19 at 20:54
  • I tried that, but it says that "version of new ROM file is not new than that of BIOS". – Abhishek Dalmia Oct 11 '19 at 17:06
  • Found this blog post http://hex.ro/wp/blog/insydeflash-bios-downgrade/comment-page-1/ and appended my answer accordingly. – dirdi Oct 12 '19 at 13:14
  • IT WORKED!! Thanks a lot for helping me out here, now the UEFI menu is accessible :D – Abhishek Dalmia Oct 13 '19 at 18:56