i'm having this same exact problem. I just copied this from notebookereview.com
hi, i'm new here, but need some desperate help. I have a new Acer aspire 5102 wlmi, only like 3 months old. Got it back in November. Suddenly last night, when I went to reboot my computer, the computer wont start up.
It will get past the Acer splash screen, then when the Windows XP splash screen comes up, the blue bar that is moving, it will stop and the computer really freeze.
Now since i've been turning the laptop on and off via power switch, it comes up to the screen giving choices of rather to boot it from safe mode, last good known configure, start windows normally, etc etc. When I choose to start up with any of the 3 safe mode options when it scans all the files, it will stop at
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\agpCPQ.sys
it'll just be stuck and frozen on that
but when when i choose to start with Last known good configuration, or start windows normally; it might or might not get past the Windows XP splash screen. But if it does, it will come to the blue check disk screen.
When it counts down from 10 seconds to 0 giving the time frame to deside rather to skip the check disk or not, it will freeze at 8 seconds if you don't press any button. But then if you do press a button before it freezes at 8 seconds, then it will continue on for a split second; getting rid of the count down and show one period (dot) showing the time waiting to go through normal start up.
get what i mean by one period/dot. how when it loads or it goes . . . . . .
"dot dot dot dot dot"
I tried starting up with the acer recoveory disk that I made when I first initially started up my laptop when I bought it. But when it loads the first recovery disk, it will freeze while it says, "Please Wait ..."
what the hell can I do
again it's a Acer Aspire 5102 wlmi laptop, that was purchased back in November 2006. So it's brand new for the most part.
i was searching around and read that, if it was plugged into an AC power source, drain the battery? no... sure if that'll work, but i'm trying that right now. It's stuck on the XP splash screen, so i'm just leaving my computer on, as well as my laptop cooler fans going to help drain out the battery faster.
But the power cable is plugged into the same socket in my room where I "ALWAYS" plug it into... never had any problem until this weekend.
How exactly would I be able to install the new bios off from a cd, when i boot from CD?
Alternatively, you might just get that XP install disk and do a fresh install. Not a format, unless you don't have anything you need to save off it. If you do format, you can blow away the Acer 5 gig restore partition, since it's obviously not doing you any good, create 2 partitions, and install fresh. Then you can flash the bios from the Windows gui.
