Dead aspire one

Re: Dead aspire one (Important but sad news)

Dear all,

Today, it is my third time my machine dead. As far as I know, I tried all possible way to recover it including all the suggested methods in this forum. I followed the previous post to recover the bios. Unfortunately, this time, I didn't even able to heal it. I just post the problem to ask whether someone else experience this problem in Hong Kong. Yes, we are not alone. Anyways, I decide to give up this machine. I used to sincerely like this machine in my heart. But, I really hate it now. I hate Acer Hong Kong claim they neither have, not even one, machine dead with this problem nor provide any help to us. Luckly, the responsible dealer agreed to refund fully by cash tomorrow.

Most importantly, I tried to update from the previous 3114 to the newest 3301 bios released offically by acer. It didn't solve the problem. That means, 3301 is not specifically for this problem. If anyone wanna try the newer 3301 bios, don't bother. It won't help.

For anyone still struggling with the machine, good luck. I really hope Acer will try their best to solve this problem... ... I am sad sad sad!!!!! Goodbye forever ACER and Aspire one!!!

 

I just finished a guide. Click below.

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3054

 

Re: Dead aspire one (Important but sad news)

Did you revert back to the older 3109 bios before using the newer 3301 or did you use the 3114 when you recovered after the first time? I have to assume that if you use 3114 bios the problem will happen again if the bios is buggy. And did the problem start after installing a different operating system/reinstalling your original operating system or was your set up original with no mods?

 

I had never tried flashing my bios with 3109. The bios was 3114 when i first bought the AA1. My AA1 was 120GB XP version. What I did was first divide the partition in 30 /70%. then, I just installed applications. I did a several "ghost" half way through my installation process. That's what I did. When I almost finished all my installation. I "ghost" it once it again. That's when the first "dead" occur. Keep in mind, by the time it dead, I had my adapter plugged and my battery level was pretty low. I did not touch the bios at all for the first machine. Then, I return it to the dealer.

For my second AA1, I did pretty much the same thing. Except, I did not start the whole process again by installing each apps one by one. Instead, I installed all the softwares all at once by running the ghost backup file previous backed up. After several on/off, movie playing. It dead again. Keep in mind, for the second time, I also had my adapter plugged and the battery level was 100%. For this second machine, the bios version was 3114 as well. After I dead, I flash it with the newest 3301 version. I works for the first time. I thought, it would solve the problem. But, in just three days, it dead again. This time, I could n't even flash the bios. I tried 3114 and 3301. They both did n't work. I did n't try the 3109.

Also, from my observation, most of the dead occur when there is a bootable USB or just USB storage device is plugged. Can anyone confirm that?

 

For now I'm sticking with the 3109 bios; a downgrade from my factory 3114. I wonder if I should reflash so that the bios correctly reads 3109 instead of 3114? But chances are the 3301 has the same issues that the 3114 bios is having. I to repartitioned my drive; one partition for xp and one for vista. I wonder if the bios D2D option has close ties with the ssd/hard drive structure? So far that makes 4 out of 4 that have tried different operating system installs.

 

My BIOS version 3109 just died in the same way that the 3114 died. That's twice in a row for the 3109 bios on this machine (yes I'm sure its 3109), and another two times on the 3114 bios. All 4 times I was either booting off of USB or shutting down from a live usb.

I think its official then isn't it? No one is safe How are we going to pester Acer about this?

 

Mine died 3 times in one weekend. First time with the latetst (updated) 3114-bios, then learned the fn-esc trick which enabled the One again.

A day later I was buzy with restoring my backup with 'partimage' on a SystemRescueCD (http://www.sysresccd.org) when it happened for the second time. Few hours later again, indeed after major system (re)installs.
It seems that the shutdown process can damage something? I have the impression that when I want to end 'partimage' on the RescueLifeCd with rebooting as choice, it crashing the bios (?) in half of the times. So now I always use 'halt' and that seems to work with no problems.

In upgraded the bios again to 3114 without problems, and for a week now I make daily backups with partimage on SystemRescueCD wihout hesitation. So I think it has something to do with restarting the One after booting from another USB-device.
To play safe, first do a total shutdown, remove the usb and start your machine again!
What do you guys think?

 

Dear all,
Although i am kinda luck that I got full refund today. I still wanna know why this damn problem happened. I swear I will never buy acer product again as Acer keep denying they have any problem at all (not even one with this problem)!!!!! Anyways, I totally agree with you. It dead when my USB storage (seems especially risky when the USB is bootable) was plugged or backing up partition or restarting. Which initial the "dead"? I don't know. I know there are a lot of basic user never plug any USB or bootable USB nor doing partition or even install another applications. They seems to have no problem. I am not perfectly sure about this. But, it seems kinda related with changing partition, or USB storage.

Anyways, finally, I feel relax as I get full refund today. Damn, I feel depress as I really like this netbook but I got no choice but to refund.

P.S. One thing for sure is that 3109, 3114 or the newest 3301 won't solve the dead problem at all. I tried 3114, 3301. One guy here tried 3109. We all failed!!

Gook luck you guys!!

 

I think you could be onto something. I remember only the last time mine died, but in that case the live cd was trying to send a reboot signal...

The thing is the bios is not made by Acer, it's some kind of Hyde thing. Does anyone know if we can get those guys to patch it for us?

 

This might be a fan issue, but my aspire one died within 15 minutes of unboxing

Reflashed bios a bunch. The thing is, the system will just shut down, either when sitting in the bios or at a black screen because linpus crapped itself before. Trying a restore as i type this

very annoying

 

Feel pretty much the same. In over thirty years of buying electronic products I have had a fair few go wrong. However Acer is by far the worst company I have ever had to deal with in terms of customer relations.

Although nowadays most electronics is made in China so there is little choice in that respect I will never buy again anything from a Chinese company. For computer gear I will probably go with either the US (Dell/HP) or the Japanese (Sony/Toshiba).

 

Mine is completely gone. I was doing some tweaking to the Linpus OS and after a restart, it wouldn't load properly. After SEVERAL restarts/unplugs, I got it to boot. Once in Linpus I undid most of the changes I made, because I thought I screwed something up. Everything was getting very slow and buggy so I restarted and I got the message "No bootable device - insert disk and press any key," or something along those lines. After several restarts, I was able to boot up, and everything was ok for a few hours. After another shutdown, I brought it up and got the same no bootable device error. I then decided to look in my bios and see if it was showing the SSD. It showed it, but it wasn't listed properly. Instead it showed something along the lines of SSDP[]M0[]08[]1EA. It had shaded blocks where letters/numbers should be. So from that I figured my SSD was going bad. Well after many failed attempts and reading this long thread, I decided to try and reflash from 3114 to 3109, and thats when my screen went completely black. Nothing is showing up, and I've tried both 3114 and 3109 and I can't get anything on the screen. I'm going to call Acer tomorrow and send this thing off. I have to take out my extra 1GB of RAM out though. It's Kingston 667 ValueRam. Well, that's my tale. I like the specs of this thing better than my Eee 701 4G, but my Eee is welcoming me back.
---------------------------------------------
Update: I finally got the bios to boot, and now it is giving me the same error as before: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"... Well at least I have something on my screen now. Maybe I'll open it back up and make sure I didn't knock around the SSD when I upgraded the ram. In fact, looking at my BIOS screen, it shows nothing for my HDD "HDD Model Name: None" and it shows my bios as v0.3114. *sigh*

 

afaik, kingston ram is known to cause issues with the aspire one - who knows what went wrong when you took it apart too. sounds like a lot of problems rolled into one, and that now it's failing to boot because the bios flash didn't take rather than an actual bios failure from the beginning.

 

I don't know if my problem is the radom black screen or the dead one. My computer is not dead, but it is not only that the screen goes black, but the system breaks down.

AA1 150 bought 20th August is Spain with no modifications (1 gb RAM, 120 gb HDD, Linpus OS, 3-cell battery, BIOS 3.114).

When operating with batteries and the level is below 20%, I have suffered this problem more than 10 times. I think it never happend when the power supply plugged.

The screen goes black, the fan still running, but the system is blocked because the led of caps lock doesn't respond to the key.

I have to turn it off pressing the on/off switch during several seconds and then the computer restarts twice. The first time it only goes to the Aspire One blue screen, takes some minutes and then restarts again with normal Linpus.

Is this the same problem for you? Any solution?

I think that downgrading my BIOS won't solve this problem.

I don't want to go to technical service if the only thing they will do is restoring my OS. I think this is not the solution either.

Thank you for your feedback!

 

This is normal, at booting linux detects that the last shutdown was not properly done, so first the disk is checked, repairs are made and the system reboots. So this is normal behaviour.

 

Right, is was only a description of the behaviour of the computer. But my concern is not for the system having to reboot twice but for the system hanging with no known reason.

Thank you anyway!

 

Identical problem with AA0: xp with battery to 20% and with linpus to 6%.
Mandate in assistance last week, days 12/09/08 should receive repaired .........
I've no idea what they repaired .......

 

Got my ONE back from Acer service this morning (thankfully they eventually agreed to honour the warranty despite the 1GB memory upgrade). They appear to have installed a new motherboard. The BIOS version is now v0.3301 (I had previously had 0.3109 but I had flashed v0.3114). Interestingly the European website still only lists v0.3114 although obviously the service department has access the later version.

 

Did you lost the information of your hard drive??

I want to have my AA1 repaired, but don't want to lose my current Linpus configuration with the new desktop, updated network manager, bluetooth, etc.

 

Acer is a Taiwanese company, always check the manufacturer's origin country website for latest BIOS.

ps. glad you finally got your A1 back