A110 - battery not working

Hey,

I've spent a couple of hours trying to figure this stuff out, but so far I've had no luck at all.

I have an Aspire One model A110 with Linpus Lite installed. It's around 8 months old.

I didn't use it for a couple of months, but yesterday when I tried to boot nothing happened. I thought the battery was running low, so I plugged in the AC adapter and it booted just fine. I let it recharge for a couple of hours, but the battery seems to be dead. When I hover the cursor over the battery/plug icon in the bottom left of the screen it says: "Plugged in ---- Fully charged".
The battery indicator on the computer has a red light, and when I let it "recharge" for ~30 minutes it starts blinking red.

So I went looking through these forums and found a couple of possible solutions(I was kinda hoping that the battery wasn't screwed, but that might be a possibility).

I tried updating the bios, but it doesn't work. I downloaded the newest version from support.acer-euro.com and followed the instructions, but when I boot with the USB stick plugged in I get a black screen saying "error 17".

I tried doing the BIOS recovery as described in this link: http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer ... overy.html That didn't work either. Actually nothing happened even though I followed the instructions.

I tried contacting acer support but the guy didn't really say anything helpful besides that he thought my battery was dead and that I had to buy a new one. He was kinda quick to say that the battery was dead, and when I told him about other people having seemingly the same problem he didn't know anything about it. So I'm kinda hesitant to buy a new battery until I have tried something else.

So! Do you guys have any ideas as to what I can do besides buying a new battery/throwing the netbook in the trash can?

 

There is a fix in BIOS v3309 that might resolve this issue for you.

If you already have BIOS v3309 or higher in your A110 then a new battery may be your only option.

If you want to upgrade to BIOS v3309 and the emergency BIOS recovery procedure will not work for you then a bootable USB stick is a prerequisite. I suggest making a USB stick bootable with FreeDOS and then copy the v3309 update files onto it.

 

I'm not too smart with these things, sorry. What is a bootable USB stick with FreeDOS, and how do I go about making on of those babies? Will this guide work? http://www.bensbits.com/2007/08/21/boot ... lash_drive

The support guy told me that in order to update the BIOS I needed to download the latest version and copy the files to a USB stick and then do the power on -> F12 -> select boot from usb. I did that and I got the "error 17" message, but I guess that's because my USB stick is nothing but an empty USB stick.

EDIT: I went ahead and followed the guide in the link and it worked! Now when I hover the cursor over the battery icon it says "AC plugged in --- 0% charged". So I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens.

Thanks a lot for the tip!

EDIT2: 1% charged! \o/

 

Looks like you're in business again!

 

I have same problem with my aspire one...and even with 3309 bios, I still get a failure to charge (unknown battery in Windows). There is definitely a problem with the Aspire batteries that the bios cannot fix.

 

Hi,

I bought a refurbished acer aspire one A110(Bios v0.3109) and got the same problem. The netbook will not boot on battery, when I plug it on the mains the red LED will start flashing after some time, also on the setting->system the battery would appear as "0 mAh" instead of "2200 mAh".

I am experimenting at the moment with a possible solution. It's completely unorthodox and doesn't make much sense but it seem to be working on my acer.

I left the unit off and charging, after the battery LED started flashing, I removed it and put it back on to charge again. After repeiting the same cycle a few more times I got the following results:

1.The battery LED stays on (no more blinking).
2.On settings->system the battery shows as "2200 mAh".
3.KPpowersave Information shows "Battery Status 100%.
4.After fully charging battery LED becomes green.
5.Notebook Boots on battery.

I will see how it works on battery and I may post more in a few days

 

Thanks GreatAlex; absolutely spot-on.

Worked for me too! My Aspire One is less than 1 yaer old and not used very much and would not power up on batteries but was fine on AC power.

Same symptoms exactly. Same battery capacity and BIOS!

Charged up with PC OFF and light came on RED and when light flashed red, unplugged and then on again and this time light went steady RED and finally GREEN.

Now all seems well!

If more developments will post again.

Thanks to the forum this time though, saved a lot of hair pulling and possible expense!!

May today be the best day of your life and all your tomorrows even better!!

 

Had the same problem with AA1 battery - system did not recognize the battery and did not want to start charging. I just kept plugging and unplugging the battery until eventually the machine found out that it had a battery It took a couple of days and I actually asked the seller for a replacement. Today I canceled the order - the battery seems to be fine. It seems that the default system massage for any trouble with the battery is: plugged in ... fully charge. The same happens when you discharge the battery down to zero.