Almost killed my Acer1??

Well for me it's been a bit of a roller coaster (And clenched buttocks!)..

I bought the SSD version with Linux, under the impression it would be faster - which it isn't! Then I decided to add WinXP. Tried Ron's TinyXP but couldn't get Outlook to connect to my ISP POP (Anyone solve this??)
Then I tried another image Aspire1XP-A150 v1.0 - this is when things started to go bad! The first thing I noticed on loading the image was the although the mains was plugged in, the battery light was flashing orange?? As I had replaced the WLAN card (to try OSX) on installing the drivers, the machine shut down?
I noticed that the fan seemed very quiet? the CPU temperature was 47degC and the fan was set to cut in at about 65degC? this seemed a bit high so I lowerred it to 55degC. Now the fan seemed to be more active and the machine more stable. Maybe these Acer's are very senstive to temperature???
I read someone that V 3309 of the Bios (Mine had been pre-loaded with v3308) would correct the battery issue?? So I windows flashed the bios. All seemed to go OK until I re-booted...
Every time I booted, the fan would come on very fast! And after a couple of minutes (whether trying to load windows/BIOS) the machine would shut off! It seemed to thing the CPU was overheating even though the fan was fully on.
This didn't look good! - as I thought, How am I going to recover the bios if the damn machine is going to shut down before I have run the flash??
I tried taking the battery out and noticed that this time the fan was quiet and the machine didn't shut off - but of course I couldn't run the re-flash! Then I tried reconnecting the power lead after the machine had booted the USB flash drive into DOS. This time the fan stayed off and I was able to re-flash the Bios.
Now when I switched on the Acer on, the battery light was a continuous green and windows loaded OK without switching off?? Lucky or what? (The Outlook POP problem was still there on the Aspire1XP-A150 v1.0 version though ??)
What worries me is, whether the original Bios had got corrupted?? explaining why the battery light was flashing when the mains was plugged in??
Also, I wonder why the flash to v3309 almost killed my Acer??
I get the impression that if the fan ever dies then these Acer's are going to die pretty quickly??
I'm still going to swap the SSD for a 60Gb Toshiba 1.8" drive and when these laptops are working correctly they are brilliant! - It just that they leave you a bundle of nerves???
All the best
Ody

 

um.. i run my AAO to 70-75 degrees celsius without a problem.

The chipset probably overheated

 

The battery LED goes green when it's fully charged! If it's orange, it's still charging. It is safer to flash the BIOS through does in case Windows crashes or something. Well it's a good thing you got it working. I use a program A1CTL to keep my fan quiet and my settings are: Stop under 55c, Slow at 65c and Fully on at 70c but I could have put higher settings because SpeedFan, a well known program for temperature and fan speed measuring tells me 10c less. I trust SpeedFan I don't think that the Aspire One's would die so quickly if the fan stops because:
1) Most us could fix the problem
2) Intel Atom is a power-efficient processor

I had A1CTL and Notebook Hardware Control running at the same time and A1CTL crashed (at that time it was off) I was very happy that my fan is so quiet and then Notebook Hardware Control system tray icon says "CPU temperature is 80c or more" I didn't believe it till the third time it happened, so I decided to check with SpeedFan, and yes my CPU temp was 82c I closed Notebook Hardware Control, opened A1CTL and set it to Fully on to cool it down. 90c is the most it can hold! I was watching videos and surfing the web with my fan off so I don't think they would die so quick!

PS. If a CPU overheats, the computer turns off and after it's cooled down you can use it again. In the past AMD processors used to burn. I've had to fix quite a few laptops with overheating problem, and believe me - it never dies!

 

I should have mentioned that the ACER had been connected to the PSU all day and the battery light went to green immediately after the BIOS recovery? Also, why did the Acer start failing after the flash to Bios v 3309?? Before the flash it was fine. It's as though the Acer though that it was over heating (explaining the fast fan) even though it was probably OK? It's odd that powering up on the battery alone, the fan stayed pretty quiet? It's all a bit odd. I had an old laptop that did the same sort of thing ie switch off after a couple of minutes - it seems that the temperature sensing circuits were dead, in this case the fan never came on, the laptop thought the CPU was overheating and switched off??
As I mentioned in the post before the flash, the CPU temperature was 47degC which, seems pretty low compared to some others - I guess the moral of the story, is if the Acer is working OK - Leave Well Alone!
Cheers
Ody