After a windows update that was supposed to do a “Insyde Firmware Flash” , my laptop is now bricked and just turns on and off repeatedly. I am familiar with the built-in Acer Crysis BIOS recovery system, and am able to get the laptop into that mode, but I need to know what FD file to put on my USB to get my system back running. Can anyone help me out here?
Did you ever do a backup of the firmware or the bios region? Attach it here.
Otherwise maybe possible to exclude one or two by microcode depending on CPU. Otherwise it’s just trying out and see if the recovery procedure works out for one of the images.
A safer mode would be getting a CH341 programmer (and maybe a 1.8V adaoter), dump the bricked firmware, have a look into it. This way one could possibly find out what might have happened and what the correct version would be.
I did not do a backup as it was a Windows Update. I assumed since it was a WIndows update it would do an inside WIndows flash hence not having to worry about bricking it. I have every BIOS file that was released for this model laptop. I think it’s Fn+Esc+Power with a bootable USB drive and the only file that needs to be on the drive is ZAA.fd but I am no sure. Someone recommended ZAA_64.fd but anyway I’ve tried as many as I can and I still am not getting anywhere. I would be willing to buy the BIOS programmer but unless it’s pretty easy to flash with one of those CH341’s you are talking about I will definitely get one. And by easy, I mean I don’t want to have to disassemble again. The solder pins on the BIOS chip will be too small for me and the CH341 looks somewhat complicated.
I should also include that all the firmware downloads for my machine are _multi.fd files so I’m not sure what to do with that.
There’s a lot of variables with this crisis recovery procedure, 4 bios files, correct usb port, variables regarding the stick (size, incompatible, filesystem), naming of the file, existing bios too corrupt, bios version-information overwritten but it might happen to work, maybe.
For the names I’d propose “ZAA*.fd”, USB stick not larger than 1GB
If you’re not comfortable with disassembling, there’s still repair shops, Acer itself, …
(Your bricked firmware might still have relevant information like Windows license and machine specific information like serial, service tags, …)