Acer Laptop not POSTing - blank screen

[sa230e]

Hey everyone,

I have an Acer Aspire 7551G laptop that's not POSTing. No beeps, nothing on the screen, no backlight, no nothing. It was working fine until this afternoon. I put it to sleep and when I came back it wouldn't boot. It powers on, the fan works but the screen is blank, there's no BIOS beeps, the hard drive indicator LED stays off. It's completely unresponsive.

What I've tried so far:
-I hooked it up to an external monitor. No signal.
-I took out the power cord and battery and held the power button for 1 min to drain all the caps. Didn't help.

I've been googling all day and I've read this a common issue in Acer laptops caused by a corrupt BIOS (how it became corrupted I have no idea) and apparently there's a feature where you can flash the BIOS from a USB drive on bootup by holding Fn+ESC when you power it on but I can't get it to work.

Information is kind of scant on how to prepare the image - you can't find it on Acer's website. This was the clearest information I found (EDIT: http://sunbane.com/2013/05/fixing-blank-screen-on-acer-aspire-7551/ ) and apparently it worked for other people with the same laptop I have. I followed the steps he took but nothing happens. The activity light on the USB drive doesn't flash. It doesn't appear to be reading it.

Can anybody shed some light on this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Burpo]

http://sunbane.com/2013/05/fixing-blank-screen-on-acer-aspire-7551/

 

[sa230e]

http://sunbane.com/2013/05/fixing-blank-screen-on-acer-aspire-7551/

Yeah, those were the exact steps I followed. I even posted the link in my question. I'm not sure why it didn't show up. I edited the original post to put in the link.

 

[fralexandr]

http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2341856/acer-aspire-7551-black-screen-boot.html
kind of a pain opening up laptops, but someone suggested pulling the cmos battery out

 

[sa230e]

http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2341856/acer-aspire-7551-black-screen-boot.html
kind of a pain opening up laptops, but someone suggested pulling the cmos battery out

Pulled the CMOS battery and left it out for about an hour to make sure it drained. Still not booting, still not reading the USB drive.

 

[Ketchup]

If you get desperate:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Aspire-7551-AMD-Laptop-Motherboard-48-4HP01-011-/371578516426

I don't know that I would put that kind of money into an Acer laptop though.

 

[sa230e]

If you get desperate:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Aspire-7551-AMD-Laptop-Motherboard-48-4HP01-011-/371578516426

I don't know that I would put that kind of money into an Acer laptop though.

So basically there's not much I can do to salvage it besides replacing the motherboard, I take it?

 

[Ketchup]

So basically there's not much I can do to salvage it besides replacing the motherboard, I take it?

Well, I did say "if you get desperate." If it's a corrupt BIOS, you can replace the BIOS chip if it's removable. If not, then yes, replace the board.

 

[Steltek]

You also might try pulling the hard drive and/or memory modules to see if the machine responds at all. I have seen situations in the past where either a failed hard drive or bad memory module made a machine respond like you have described.

 

[sa230e]

You also might try pulling the hard drive and/or memory modules to see if the machine responds at all. I have seen situations in the past where either a failed hard drive or bad memory module made a machine respond like you have described.

Yeah I pulled the hard drive, DVD drive, Ram, everything. Still not responsive. I'm thinking of throwing in the towel on this one.