dtownsend

I am working on an acer aspire 5100 that will not boot. I did at 1 point get the restore screen and restored the system. Then when re-booted it came back to 2 beeps then black screen with message f1 to continue or f2 to go into setup. If you continue the windows screen comes up then freezes. and if you go into setup to change boot sequence the system does not take the change, just keeps going to black screen. I see lots of things saying if you get 3 beeps it's probably the mother board. but this is 2 beeps. I know the hard drive is good because I removed and attached on external cable to my other laptop and I could see the drive and all documents. The acer does not do a post beep if I start without memory in system. I tried different memory chips and that didn't do any good. I read somewhere about re-seating the cpu, that is my next test but I see there has been a lot of post regarding this system and was wondering if anyone had come up with anything else?
I have downloaded the new bios version, but I can't get it to load in the laptop. Not sure if this has anything to do with problem but has vista home premium on it.