Dead aspire one

My One that failed shipped with v.3114 - and it is a new machine manufactured just days ago. It's just a bad BIOS. I now have TWO A150s running 3109, and all is well so far!

 

You may be right. However, what I don't understand is how the Bios would fail to POST after several days or weeks.

 

That is the only strange part about this whole mess. I am not sure why this would occur but it seems to be true. Maybe there is a variable that is checked to ensure boot and that is being incremented or something.

 

The bios is presumably in EPROM and shouldn't change unless it is flashed (which involves writing at a higher voltage). With the machine powered off there shouldn't therefore be any difference in settings between boots and at POST the machine will not have yet started to check the hardisk/SSD so the choice of OS etc shouldn't make a difference (also not whether e.g. DRAM is present, functioning etc). Apart from non recoverable failures of the mainboard the only way this could happen is if somehow the contents of the BIOS were corrupted.

I wonder if this could happen during the power down sequence. Presumably theoretically it must be possible otherwise it would not be possible to update the BIOS electrically.

 

I experience this black screen problem two days ago when trying to awaken from a 1 hour Sleep.
The fan was spinning and both the power (on mains) and WiFi lights were on - but a black screen.
I removed mains power and then the battery and waited 5 min.
I reinstalled the battery and hit power on.
It came up with the monitor, then a partial desktop then took itself back to the monitor and then booted the desktop.
I then did a panic backup and full shutdown as it seemed excessively warm.
Its been fine ever since. (fingers crossed)

Note: I have NOT modified the hardware (or disassembled) or updated the BIOS .

OS: Linpus Linux Lite v1.0.3E
Linux 2.6.23.9lw
Bios: v0.3109
0.5 Meg RAM, 8 Gig SSD

 

OS: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Bios: 0.3109

No hint of trouble yet, had it 2 days. Definitely seems like a bad bios upgrade (lucky my Live Update crashed in Linpus!) Not a big issue it seems though, since most of you were about to downgrade to 0.3109! Sucks for Acer QA though... :evil:

 

The live update does not update the bios. It only updates the software. If it updated the bios then I would have the newest bios as well.

 

Thank you for the usefull thread!!! You people saved another Acer One - I'm so happy :mrgreen:
PS: Mine died when I tried to boot form usb, but I pressed F12 right after the the screen that tells me to do so , the moment between BIOS post check and OS load screen - and my screen never turn on...Lucky me - it's a software problem.

 

My first AAO died on me. I put in 1GB of ram and it worked fine for a few days. Then one day I turn it on and I get nothing on the screen. The green light comes on, i hear the fan going, i hear the HD spin, but nothing on screen. I called up Acer and they told me to pull out the battery, plug, and then hold the power down for about 30 secs and then power it on with just ac power. Still nothing, they said it was probably a dead mobo. The agent told me I could send it to them or if my local store had a DOA warranty I should try them first since it'd be faster.

I brought the AAO into the store I bought it from and they gave me a new one. It's been working fine since. I upgraded the ram to 1.5 GB now and it's still working. I take apart notebooks all the time at work so I'm super careful about it so I can't attribute the dead AAO to my doing.

 

Too bad I sent it back to the shop, maybe the BIOS-flashing would work... :/ Haven't heard anything from them yet, but sure as hell hope they'll send me a new one.

 

Woot!! Another successful recovery - had all the same problems, new 3114 bios, reflashed and now its all booting well again

*happy*

 

Nice, I got my machine back today - don't know if they flashed the BIOS or what they did, but it's working. I think the motherboard is replaced, but not sure. Hope it'll last this time

 

Congratulations. Hope it lasts longer this time!!

Is the BIOS v3109 or v3114?

I am still waiting for my One to come back from repair. They said at the end of last week that they were planning on installing a new motherboard.

 

I had the same symptom after adding 1G Kinstong memory and flashing new 3114 bios but my AAO was heavily moded. I installed a 2.5 zif 30G hitachi Travelstar hard drive from my rarely used Dell DJ30 mp3 player. The AAO performed very well with Linpus and Windows XP dual boot until it suffered black screen during an abnormal shutdown of my USB systemrescuedisc. I thought it would never waked. But my AAO awaked by following the instruction in Macles's blog:
http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer ... overy.html :lol:

 

Just to addon to my earlier leaps of joy - my BIOS died on me again twice today after restoring from a 3109 backup that I had (both times booting some form of media or other it hung - maybe it's related?)

That said, my bios still says its 3114 so that could be the problem... hope there's a fix soon!

 

Refuse to wait AOA150 and received my old AOA110 from Acer Service Center with 0.3114 BIOS but after several booting, it died! Restoring 0.3109 not mean downgrade the BIOS version, so after restore process you have to manually downgrade it over normal flash (Boot to DOS, flash 0.3109).

 

It says BIOS v3109..

 

So I had this happen to two Aspire Ones in 6 days. I returned one and kept the second in an attempt to fix it myself. And lo and behold I found this forum with a link to the bios downgrade procedure.

The way I got into this mess is a little different from previous posts. I was attempting to install OSX. Yes OSX. The first time I didn't get far. I believe I had done the install and rebooted into the black screen. I then returned it thinking it was bad hardware.

The second time was during an OSX install. Got the desktop working and was installing some updates, rebooted and black screen. I downgraded the bios and it became UN-Bricked. So I continued on with the OSX install. Interestingly enough, I got the black screen again with firmware 3109! So i re-flashed it with 3109 and UN-Bricked it again.

So I'm not sure what's happening. Does the bios or the EProm become writable at some point by a fluke and thus gets coprrupted?

Any input?

where's....myLostSphincter

 

mylostsphincer: I had to "unbrick" the BIOS by flashing it once, and then when it was working, flash it again the normal way back to 3109. This was mentioned in this thread, and I overlooked it too at first but it makes a difference.

Easiest way to tell, press F2 during bootup and check the version. If it still says 3114, you need to downgrade again the proper way.

 

Have my AAO 100 since 5 days...update bios 4 days ago and upgraded my RAM with 1GB of Kingston 533. It won't boot anymore as described in this thread :evil: ...gonna try to downgrade my Bios....keep you posted.

On Acer's site it says at downloads: Bios Windows XP v.03114 :?:

Followed the link/howto and guess what? He is alive again...Bios says v3114 though...who cares next Bios updat will overwrite it with higher nr. I bet.