Cannot enter true BIOS of Acer Laptop 9410Z

Hello All. This is my first post.

I cannot enter the "true BIOS" of my Acer 9410Z laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium. The only thing I can enter during boot up by hitting F2 is a simplistic screen that lets me set up the boot order of drives and set passwords. No other hardware level settings are available like they are on every other computer I have owned. I have not been able to find information anywhere on how to get at the true BIOS of this machine.

The reason I want to do this is because I have a new DVD-R/W drive from Pioneer, a DVR-K17LA, that is compatible up to UDMA-6, but is only recognized as PIO. I cannot set it to DMA mode in the device manager. My old DVD-R/W which will still read but no longer write, is recognized just fine as UDMA-2. I want to be able to see if there is anything I can change in the BIOS to turn on UDMA for the new DVD drive.

I have been through all of the FAQs available on what to do if a drive is stuck in PIO mode. There are suggestions on the internet about editing the registry for this issue, but they don't apply in this case since my registry does not have the potentially problematic entries.

Any suggestions?

 

Was a User Guide supplied with the laptop? It should tell you how to get into the BIOS there (they will probably call it something about startup, like the Startup Configuration Settings). There might be information in any Acer menus in Windows or you could look for the download at their website.

Just try holding a key down from pushing the power button and it should send you to the BIOS with an error message.

Although...I don't recall seeing settings for DMA in the BIOS. I have reset DMA for HDDs, that just involved going to Device Manager and uninstalling the IDE Controllers, then rebooting. It's probably a SATA drive, which I haven't dealt with.

Search at MS for "DMA ", "UDMA ", "PIO" and "Mode" if you like
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

HDD manufacturers may offer a small file/program to change the UDMA setting, but the last time I used one was on a bootable floppy disk.

Sorry I can't give you specifics about optical drives.

Matt
PS check that the manufacturer's chipset, SATA and IDE drivers have been installed (in Windows).

 

I have looked into your suggestions

I put my responses to your suggestions in bold below:

 

Searching around, it does seem like something that can have lots of different fixes.

It is new, so go to the Pioneer website and ask at their Contact Us page.

 

Ctrl+alt+esc ?

 

I will have to send the drive back

Holding down Ctrl+alt+esc on boot up and the computer just boots up normally as if I am not holding down any keys. ACER really has made it a mystery on how to get into the BIOS on this machine, I must say.

I spoke to Pioneer technical support about this drive and we came to the conclusion that I should return it for a refund. Support verified that it should be able to be used in UDMA mode, but that should happen very easily as it does with my old TSST drive.

The only suggestion they have is that it might need to be "re-flashed" with new internal firmware, but there is no way that I personally can do that. So it will have to go back and I will have to find another drive. Thanks to those who tried to help.

 

Yes there is but I think your best course of action is to return it.

 

At least no way they would tell me

At least there is no way they would tell me about how to reflash it.