Acer 5810tz's "Secret" (Shhhhh!) BIOS Menu

As described in http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g/ and on NotebookReview's Forum, there are hidden menus in Insyde's Acer  BIOS.  Some folks modify their BIOSes to enable them; however,  on the Acer 5810, it's possible to enable some of these menus with just a setup change, which is, of course, safer than having to flash your whole BIOS just to modify a single boolean.

To do so, you need:

•  a DOS-bootable USB stick
• the flashit.exe binary from the BIOS update
• grdb from http://ladsoft.tripod.com/grdb.htm

Copy the utilities to the usb disk and create a batchfile (ex. modify.bat) and add the following:

flashit Setup A04A27F4-DF00-4D42-B552-39511302113D /rb:setup

grdb setup

flashit Setup A04A27F4-DF00-4D42-B552-39511302113D /wb:setup

     

Reboot to DOS on the USB stick, run the batchfile and in GRDB type:
e 31a 1 

w 

q

When you reboot, you should have an extra menu "Intel" below "D2D Recovery"

The "hidden setup" is usually located immediately after the "D2D recovery" variable.  If you wish to locate it on a different version of Acer Insyde bios, you can write out the setup variable ( the /RB command-line) with and without D2D recovery enabled.  The location one past that will be what you need. For example:

fc /b setup1 setup2

Comparing files SETUP1 and SETUP2

00000219: 00 01

Which is 21A (or 31a if you are using GRDB, because GRDB pretends it's a .COM file )

Although its unlikely that messing up the setup variables will cause the laptop to not boot, prudence would be to know how to use the FN-ESC "Crisis Recovery mode" and know what the filename is for your particular laptop.  (Mine is JM41X64.fd)

Possibly Useful Reference:

Post On Lenovo Forum With FlashIt Parameters

Pictures:

"Secret" menu available. 

Intel->

Intel->Power

Intel->Advanced

Intel->Advanced->Boot