bios change needed?

jape phillips · Thu Feb 07, 2008 8:17 am

System Name ACER-684C9A655D
System Model Aspire 3621 laptop
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies LTD V1.03, 06/02/2006

I have had no luck with info from Phoenix(Award) or Acer of course ...

I think perhaps Acer have adapted this BIOS as it has far fewer options than I have seen on other PCs
It seems to have very few boot options and I want to boot from USB
It only offers CD/HDD

I have also upgraded memory from 256 meg to ADDED 1 gig - sisoft says the board is 1gig total only but I took a chance and it seems to show and hopefully uses the lot. Again BIOS shows nowt.
Can I risk a flash to a later BIOS to get control?

I am a newbie but willing to have a go.

Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:18 am

a bios update will only be available from Acer since Phoenix/Award only produces the core components and adapts them for actual hardware. so no update will ever be available from Phoenix/Award but only from your hardware manufacturer, which is in your case Acer. you can update the bios but you won't have more options to set. this is quite normal on laptops and there's nothing you can do about that. the reason is their limited expandability. a bios doesn't need options for pci/agp add-in cards, four ide devices or a second vga card as those are unavailable on a laptop.

jape phillips · Thu Feb 07, 2008 10:28 am

Thanks CP, of course Acer have ignored a few emails so I have to look here for help. Do you know of any other way of forcing a USB boot? Is it possible to replace the BIOS chip or is it too specific to the machine? It has three USB ports already so I would assume it looks at them at some point in startup? In fact I want to clean it all off and just have a USB drive Linux OS.