38 seconds! Then death.

Bought an Acer Aspire One AOA110 use. First time I started it up, everything was fine. It started up and I was able to set the wireless connection and worked on it for ten or fifteen minutes then shut it down.

I inserted an SD card (which was not formatted for FAT) and it started up "Windows XP screen" and then but the first screen was "checking file system on C..." The disk check runs until exactly about 10% to 22% completed and then it shuts down instantly: screen goes blank and the power is off. Then happens repeatedly.

I have tried Alt+F10, it gets all the way to the desktop and I can even open up the Control Panel and then it shuts down after about 38 seconds. I also tried changing the boot order to the internet recovery: same thing -- it shuts down totally after about 38 to 40 seconds. Once I even got it to start on "Safe Boot" but again, it shut down after just over half a minute.

I do have the Acer discs: one is Windows XP and the other is a System CD. I don't have an external CD/DVD player so I tried copying these to a USB drive -- no results.

I don't know what else to try.

 

I should add that I removed the SD card (I really don't think it was the problem).

The system starts up and even gets to the desktop and I can open the control panel. It seems to be a time thing because it shuts down after a certain amount of time, no matter what is happening.

 

If you've bought it used, the shut down problem is probably why. However most times the reason is the CPU fan is full of dust and debris. If you think you can handle it, you'll have to disassemble the netbook and make sure there's no junk in the fan or in its ducts. If you don't want to open the machine up, your best bet is probably to get a can of compressed air from the supermarket and give the vents and fan a good blast.

 

Thanks. I eventually fixed it by restarting it about 40 times. Eventually it went all the way though "Checking disk" and started up normally.

Someone on a different forum suggested using F8 to get to the Advanced Boot Options, which seem promising.