Acer Aspire one D150 BSOD loop and BIOS problem

I have a 2 year old Aspire one D150, and Im very happy with it, it's been with me on numerous trips, served as my mobile internet device, GPS, photo storage and as of recently - desktop substitute.

I use it as my main computer, but for two purposes - watching movies and surfing the net, and it's running on external monitor all the time. I've even drained the battery to 40% and removed it so it doesn't charge up and down all the time, so the laptop is running only on cable. First strange thing I've noticed about it is whenever I would have laptop running on battery and run Photoshop to fix some photos, the screen (external monitor) would sometimes flash black. I think the problem would go away when it got back on AC only.

The real problem emerged three days ago. I didnt download any hardware updates whatsoever, I only have USB wifi internet access so it's not that fast and it's kinda pricey to download things over it anyway. I have free Avira antivirus and Windows firewall and I only visit sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, some news portals and Gmail. I have XP Pro SP2 installed.

Few days ago I started up the computer and it went into that "Last Known Configuration That worked, Safe Mode..." etc. Day before I used the computer normally, so I figured maybe I didnt shut down properly. I chose "Start windows normally".

After few seconds, the Windows boot screen came up but the loading bar had no blue squares, and after 2 seconds it blitzed the BSOD and restarted, leading to the "Last Known conf..." screen again, and whatever I chose it did the same thing. Flashed BSOD for half a second and went back to restart.

I managed to take a photo of the BSOD and this is what it said;

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

Technical information

STOP: 0X0000007B (0XF7CA0524, 0XC0000034, 0X00000000)

I took the hard drive out, transferred all my important files to another computer and formatted it. I've started the XP setup, formatted to NTFS (full format, not the quick one) and had XP up and running in an hour. However, after second restart the computer went to the BSOD / Last Known Configuration... / restart loop again.

I went into BIOS to see what's the deal and I've noticed that SATA Mode is set to AHCI.

I've changed it back to IDE, and everything worked. So 99,9999% chance that the first time I've seen the BSOD I should've went to BIOS and change SATA Mode to IDE and everything would work, formatting was unnecessary.

Today when I plugged the AC and started the laptop, it went into BSOD mode again. Went to BIOS, changed the SATA mode, fixed the date from 1.1.2001. to appropriate and Windows ran normally. I've even restarted to see what will happen, and it loaded Windows normally, with correct date and everything. But I'm sure if I unplug the power and shut down, it will go back to AHCI and 1.1.2001. again.

So what could be the case here, why can't it remember the BIOS settings of SATA mode and time & date?

Thanks to anybody who has some ideas what could the problem be

 

If it's 2 years old, used lightly and disconnected from battery or AC for extended amounts of time, it could be that the BIOS battery is flat. If this is the case you'd expect to see your computers date and time being lost, as well as BIOS settings being reverted to defaults.

They're usually a button-cell battery, but I'm not 100% sure what they put in these AAOs