Fix: Acer Aspire One (AS1) ZG5 blank screen at startup

Seems Acer Aspire One (AS1) ZG5 can have a recurring problem, esp. if its battery is near its end of life. If it shuts down abruptly its BIOS settings seem to get corrupted and its BIOS instead of discarding them seems to freeze.

Luckily they have a way to update the BIOS via USB key at machine power up. Flashing the BIOS (even to the same version) will fix the issue. Probably resetting the BIOS NVRAM data would do the same, but since you can’t boot this is the way to do it (without fiddling with the hardware directly that is).

The process suggested by ACER in case you come across this issue is the following:

Create a recovery USB drive to update the Bios on the unit.

The specific steps to perform this recovery with the USB drive are:

1. Download & Extract BIOS_Acer_3310_A_AOA110 & AOA150 (found in  https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/60?b=1)

2. Rename the Bios name from 3310.fd to zg5ia32.fd

3. Copy zg5ia32.fd and Flashit.exe to USB flash drive.

4. Start the restoration process:

1. Plug the AC Adapter into the unit.
2. Insert the USB flash drive into a USB port.
3. Press and Hold down the Fn and the Esc keys together.
4. Keep these keys held down and press power.
5. When the unit’s power light comes on release the Fn and Esc keys.
6. After the keys have been released the power light will start to blink.
7. Let the unit run and after approximately 1 to 7 minutes, the unit should reboot.
8. Video should now be restored.

Can also see the process in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHkGkw9EE8c&feature=emb_logo

See my comment there with the newer links I have above, have fixed the links they had (since they had old broken ACER links they eventually provided the file themselves) so that you download the BIOS from ACER directly, to be safer and to be sure you always get the latest BIOS (aka 3310 at the time of writing).

Fix: Invalid Firmware Image at Dell Inspiron 3537 BIOS update

For some time now I was trying to update the BIOS of an older Dell Inspiron 3537 laptop from inside Windows (with the InsydeFlash application that the respective Dell update package employs), only to get a blue screen saying Invalid Firmware Image upon reboot and the BIOS update was skipped every time.

Since that update was fixing a critical security issue (Intel Security Advisory INTEL-SA-00115 – CVE-2018-3639 & CVE-2018-3640), I decided to do some more research on it. I eventually came to the conclusion that since I had A9 BIOS version, I needed to install BIOS version A10 first (which addresses CVE-2017-5715 and associated Intel Reboot issue), then try the BIOS version A11 update that the Dell Support online was offering.

Luckily there was a Dell BIOS update guide that was suggesting to visit Dell downloads catalog to find older updates, from where I found all Dell Inspiron 3537 updates and was able to locate the A10 BIOS update.

Updating the BIOS from version A9 (the version I had, as displayed at “Current BIOS” field on the InsydeFlash UI) to A10 and then after reboot from A10 to A11 with the respective update executables worked fine. Can confirm the update is done by launching the update once more and then just Cancel.