AAO 150 - my experience so far

Hello all,

Two days ago I purchased a factory refurbished AAO from a market place seller on Amazon. I am really pleased with it, despite a number of problems I've had to contend with. Searching around these forums I get the impression the problems I've faced are fairly typical and that a lot of users have had to resort to returning the laptop to Acer to try get them fixed. The resolutions to each of the problems I've faced so far were found after research on these forums and others, and as a way of thanks I will outline what's gone wrong and the solutions I found, in the hope that the information will save the frustration of future AAO owners (particularly people, like me, who stick keywords into google and end up reading through forum threads).


Problem: Battery not recognised / not charging
Possible solution: Upgrade to BIOS version 3309 or above
Version 3309 of the BIOS fixes a bug that locked batteries in a state that prevents them from charging. After updating the BIOS remove the battery and restart the machine, replace the battery after booting and wait. After about 20 minutes of windows reporting no battery mine magically appeared and began to charge. The %charge was not reported until after another reboot, but it's working fine now.
http://global-download.acer.com/GDFiles ... SC=EMEA_27
This problem appears to be the reason why the refurbished AAO I bought was returned in the first place.


Problem: Upgrading to BIOS version 3109 causes the laptop to shut off 10-30s after pressing the power button. The fan is on full blast the whole time between turning the laptop on and the power cutting out
Possible solution: Unplug the laptop and remove the battery. Leave it to sit for 20 minutes or so, then hold the power button down for 20 seconds. Plug in the power and boot, assuming it doesn't cut the power, reinsert the battery and everything should be fine. It appears that, for whatever reason, the BIOS update upsets the temperature sensor on the fan - which is why it comes on full blast, then panics when the temperature appears to stay above a safe level. Holding the power button probably discharges any latent capacitance on the board and resets the sensor (this is total speculation, mind!).
Notably, while researching this problem I came across another very similar situation where the power cut after a short period, but the fan never came on at all. The suggested solution to this was firmly tapping near the ventilation outlet of the laptop to unstick the fan. Quite a significant number of people had replied to the guy who made this suggestion saying it had solved their problem.


Problem: Windows 7 setup says it can't be installed on this drive.
Possible solution: Remove all the partitions from the drive and restart setup.
My AAO came with Linux Linpus, which I quickly replaced with windows 7. The setup programme initially reported that it was unable to install onto my hard drive, even after deleting the two existing Linux partitions and creating a new NTFS partition. Simply rebooting, restarting the setup and reselecting the new partition solved this.


Problem: The AAO refuses to connect to certain wireless routers (in my case a Sky Broadband Sagem router) and gives no reason why.
Possible solution: Switch the router mode to "54g Auto". Mine was set to "54g Performance" and simply said "Unable to connect" after entering the key. I'm not entirely sure why it wouldn't work with in performance mode; every other computer I own works great with this router. The following is a quote from the routers help section that sheds absolutely no light on the difference between the two modes.

So, these are the problems I've had so far. I've been able to fix them thanks to all the people on forums like these who have taken the time to share information and post their experiences.

Thanks all.