troubleshoot with acer 1640z bios

by **toz** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 11:32 pm

hi everybody, i'm new here.

apologize for my bad english, cause i'm french.

ok i've got a problem with the laptop of my brother. it's a acer 1640z series ( 1642zwlmi s56 - LX.AAG05.197 ).
after re install the system i've got a problem with the video card, i can't install neither the intel video driver nor the ati video driver.
so i think it could be have a problem with the bios cause of bad flash with the wrong version. but i lost video signal with the intel bios
version and i have video signal but driver problem with tha ati bios version and vga performance 640*480 4 color, and lignes all over the screen.

someone got a idea? thank's for interest

by **toz** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:22 am

in fact i don't understand why the ati bios version work cause in the spec it must have intel video ship in.
so perhaps the video ship is over and burn?

by cp » Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:17 am

ati bios? intel bios? there are no such things when it comes to system bioses. if you're talking about video bioses: how did you flash an intel video bios or an ati video bios?

did you flash the latest system bios version that acer supplies for your machine? was the flash successful? did you download the drivers that acer supplies for your machine? did they install correct?

by **toz** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:22 pm

thank's for reply

so when i talk about intel or ati bios version i talk about the acer bios for this notebook who conten two version of the bios. one for the notebook with a intel video ship a another for ati video ship.

and also the driver i use are download from acer site and are specifique for the laptop. the bios come from acer too.

the flash method work fine,i use a usb floppy disk with crisis recovery disk

by cp » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:56 pm

boot a linux cd of your choice, log in and type:

lspci -n[enter]

please report back with the output.

by **toz** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:32 pm

ok i start a ubuntu linux and i type lspci -n in command line box and it tell me this :

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".

See "man sudo_root" for details.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -n

00:00.0 0600: 8086:2590 (rev 04)

00:01.0 0604: 8086:2591 (rev 04)

00:1b.0 0403: 8086:2668 (rev 04)

00:1c.0 0604: 8086:2660 (rev 04)

00:1c.1 0604: 8086:2662 (rev 04)

00:1c.2 0604: 8086:2664 (rev 04)

00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:2658 (rev 04)

00:1d.1 0c03: 8086:2659 (rev 04)

00:1d.2 0c03: 8086:265a (rev 04)

00:1d.3 0c03: 8086:265b (rev 04)

00:1d.7 0c03: 8086:265c (rev 04)

00:1e.0 0604: 8086:2448 (rev d4)

00:1f.0 0601: 8086:2641 (rev 04)

00:1f.1 0101: 8086:266f (rev 04)

00:1f.3 0c05: 8086:266a (rev 04)

01:00.0 0300: 1002:714a

06:01.0 0607: 104c:ac56

06:04.0 0280: 8086:4220 (rev 05)

06:08.0 0200: 10ec:8139 (rev 10)

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

by cp » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:02 pm

1002:714a

there is an ati mobility radeon x1300 in your laptop. install the appropriate bios from the Acer site and get the ATI drivers from the Acer site, too.

by **toz** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:19 pm

ok i've taken the ati video driver from acer and i install them. the system reconize the ati radeon mobility x1300 but when i restart the system it was in vga mode and still have green line all over the screen at the begining, and next when windows loading it crash => blue screen with "ATI2DVAG" and restart...

it sound like a gpu dead.....?

by cp » Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:20 am

did you install the drivers on a clean system? if not: did you uninstall all former drivers? did you select the standard vga driver and rebooted once?

by **toz** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:31 pm

yes the system is just formated and winxp home is only install.
i see a strange thing when i boot on linux ubuntu with the live cd when i'm on the linux desktop there no green ligne streeping the streen like the wondows desktop...?!?

by cp » Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:33 pm

so the screen output is only garbled with windows? if so the gpu is not the problem.
did you get the driver from the ACER support page?
please note that you can not (well, at least not without some expert knowledge) use the standard ATI mobile Catalyst driver.

by **toz** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:52 pm

yes i know i take the last driver from acer for the 1640zserie. the ati driver : VGA Driver ATI 8.205.0.0 but it still make me blue screen with ATI2DVAG
it's realy incredible !!! i ve got little knowledge in pc hangup but it's the firt time i see this. the green line striping the screen realy make me think for gpu over heat or some hardware issue not software...

realy complex problem don't you think?

by cp » Thu Jan 17, 2008 4:41 pm

somewhat strange.
since you didn't answer my former question about the screen output: is the screen output garbled when you start up the computer (e.g. when entering the bios)? is the screen output garbled in linux (ubuntu), too?

by **toz** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:56 pm

the screen output garbled at the begining almost when i'm going into the bios menu. for windows it garbled all the time. and for linux it's garbled at start notebook then in the loading page of linux but not when linux is ready and on the desktop.

by **AUG** » Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:03 am

hey cp
can you please help me out...

i have an acer 1640z and did a bios flash with the latest bios for this laptop..
however, it was the wrong version in terms of the video chip... instead doing it with the intel graphics version, i did it with the ati drivers...

... mea culpa

i flashed the correct version of bios now, however i cannot get the internal lcd work anyhow...
what is most strange for me is that its claimed that when you do a bios flash, the video bios get reprogrammed as well...
in bios settings i get an Alviso 1219 intel graphics version, with a date for the video bios of 2005 or 2006

my laptop is connected to an external monitor and thats the only way i can access my system.

i`d be utterly grateful if you`d help me out with this
thanx