acer aspire one bios corruption

[casio]

after finally getting around to removing vista's half of hdd and expanding xp's half to the whole drive (thanks to gparted and unetbootin) i thought all would be well with the lil netbook, till this afternoon when it just wouldnt boot, and when i mean wouldnt boot i mean no bios, not error beeps or anything other than a little whirring sound (not the hdd kind of whirring more like a really slow fan), after ten mins of googling i discovered a curious "feature" of the AAO where it corrupts its bios and wont boot

luckily its a five min job to fix and im going to post how now incase anyone else has this problem cos it seems very common depending on the bios version your running,

ok first off download the bios of your choice (i didnt go with the newist this afternoon but after a bit of reading i may tomorrow cos i remembered reading something about one of them stopping you being able to get the lower levels of screen brightness and i have mine on min to get the best 12hrs out of the battery as i can) i went with the 3305 and its worked fine

http://sites.google.com/site/maclesb...S/ZG5_3304.zip
http://sites.google.com/site/maclesb...S/ZG5_3305.zip
http://sites.google.com/site/maclesb...S/ZG5_3307.zip
http://sites.google.com/site/maclesb...S/ZG5_3308.zip
http://sites.google.com/site/maclesb...S/ZG5_3309.zip

(all of the bios's and their md5's are available from http://sites.google.com/site/maclesblogspotcom/)

ok to fix the bios download and extract the files from the zip, and put both FLASHIT.EXE and the BIOS file in the root directory of the stick. rename the bios file to ZG5IA32.FD then put the usb key with these on it into the right hand side usb ports of the aao, connect both the battery and the ac power and hold down the fn and esc and press the power button after a couple of seconds let go of the fn and esc and the power button should flash, press the power button to begin the flashing process, now dont press anything on the aao and the power button should stop flashing and it should reboot the aao, fixing the corrupted bios or upgrading it, if anything didnt go as planned or anything went wrong wait about 5 mins before turning it off and trying again incase its still flashing the new bios

from what ive read it doesnt matter what model the aao is be it the linux or the xp version (obviously with it being the bios) or the one with the ssd or the hdd

hope this is of some use to someone

cas

[wakadoo]

have read that some bios updates can cause probs with battery charging....is yours still ok m8.

[casio]

I read the same but didn't have much option, that's why I went with the 3305 rather than the 3309, I've charged the battery tonight and all seems ok so far,

[koola2]

Still need a BIOS that allows you to boot from the SD expansion card slot to make life easier.

[casio]

why'd you need that m8? personally i boot bt3 from a usb key and that runs fine that and ive got a 2gb card in the expansion slot for when im running xp and thats for eboostr, supposedly its like ready boost for vista but for xp (personally though i cant tell much difference)