aoa 110-ab black screen and cursor flashing

[kenny825507]

Hi
I have been given a acer aspire one AOA110 with the 8gb ssd disk and limpus lite that was working this morning.
It was switched off with the power button :!:
when switched back on hard disk light flashes and logo appears then black screen and cursor moves hard disk flashes for several seconds, but does not get to ready. :cry:

I have tried alt f10 when logo appears but makes no change also d2d is enabled in the bios.

there is no recovery dvd with it so my questions are:
1) can it be recovered without the dvd :?:
2) if not can i download the dvd image from somewhere :?:
and follow the recovery using 2gb usb flash on another pc that has a dvd drive :?:
3) Is there a manual that can be downloaded for this netbook :?:

I notice one post mentioned booting from usb flash and running equivalent of chkdsk.

can this be any version of Linux and what is the utility to create this usb flash called :?:

any help is welcome
Ken (expert Microsoft user) nil linux user

 

[Darryl]

Hi,
re-flashing the bios can help in these situations

Get the bios 3310 here
http://sites.google.com/site/maclesblogspotcom/BIOS

rename the bios file as it says here on aug 20th entry

http://macles.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-09-03T14:38:00+01:00&max-results=7

and then follow the rest of the instructions to boot the usb and flash the new bios

All your other questions have been answered on the forum as well so use the search facility. Recovery images are available for download onto a bootable usb. A cursory search turned up these...

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/...posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

Personally I would download an iso image of linux mint as it all works out of the box and create a bootable usb using unetbootin and do away with linpus-linux as its based on fedora 8.

good luck

 

[kenny825507]

Hi,
re-flashing the bios can help in these situations

Get the bios 3310 here
http://sites.google.com/site/maclesblogspotcom/BIOS


well i have now got bios 3310 but still no good so i need the get a image :!:

i have found several entries that mention url's and servers but most seem to have lapsed :!:

i even found one entry that said it was impossible to restore the 8gb ssd from the recovey image

what a load of rubbish this netbook is :!:

anyway some of the entries mention creating a bootable usb drive to allow one to get to a:

maybe i could then Mount :?: the ssd drive and examine the ssd structure and run checkdisk equivalent and maybe put some comments in the scripts to see why it is not completing its boot

anyhelp in creating this usb boot drive presumably with something like VI (i hate it) to see the logs etc

 

[Darryl]

I really would strongly suggest downloading another distro (iso) and using unetbootin to install it. Its very easy. All you do is select the drive and browse to the image directory and click go. This creates a bootable usb that
will enable you to test the distro and install it. To faff with the recovery image to recover an outdated distro a well as trawl thru instructions using the terminal to enable to do as you are requesting seems a lot of work for little reward. You could also use the above distro to boot the unit and then explore the ssd/files to your hearts content.....as I said before....Linux Mint works best out of the box.

whaddya kno i found one that works....
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4373562/acer_aspire_one_recovery_image

 

[kenny825507]

well i have created a puppy usb flash drive and i can now get to linux

i can see the ssd drive and usb drive i can see in lost and found many files on ssd disk

i have downloaded the aspire image .gz file but it looks like i neeed to expand it as aspire has 3 usb ports might try zcat from usb no 2 to usb no 3

what a faff :!:

 

[kenny825507]

well progress of sorts running puppy of flash 1

formated my cruzer 2gb flash drive on vista to clear all files off (note it is one hat shows as having a cd as well)

has 1.9 gb free when mounted it shows as sdf1 and sr0 (cd)

the image is called acer.gz on flash 2 shows as sde

i am trying zcat /mnt/sde/acer.gz >> /dev/sdf1 (igb flash) to (2gb flash)

get stdout no space left on device
not sure about mnt and dev but it works for 5 mins before error but after sdv1 can not be read

also unable to run fsck maybe i need some more help to point me in the right direction

 

[kenny825507]

sucess but maybe something is still missing :!:

i decided to try the cruzer titanium 2.0 flash drive to see what happened

it took 25 mins and running the recovery program from the flash it restored the disk to its original state.

zillians of live update sessions and it is as good as new again.

not sure what may be missing but it cant be much.

so to sumarise.

on xp machine
============

1 download puppy linux iso

2 burn with nero

3 instal bittorrent

4 download acer aspire recovery disk from the given site using bittorent

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4373562/acer_aspire_one_recovery_image[/quote]

5 copy to flash media 2

6 boot from cd and configure Puppy

7 create a usb puppy linux on flash media 1


acer aspire
=========
8 boot from usb flash and configure puppy using F12 at switch on

9 mount flash media 2 and a new flash media 3 (2gb at least)

10 select console icon

11 zcat /mnt/sde/acer.gz >> /dev/sdf1 that is (igb flash) to (2gb flash)

i got error message no more space but it seems to be o/k

12 shutdown

13 boot from flash media 3 using F12 at boot time

follow dialog to rebuild aspire

14 when complete re-boot (remove flash media 3)

15 select settings -> live update

16 reboot when told

17 repeat 15 & 16 till no more updates



then work out how to save/create a recovery disk if it is possible :?

 

[Darryl]

Better than that... this takes an image of the whole drive and slightly compresses it onto a bootable usb. The image is created and then verified and takes about 15-20 min to either backup or restore, then you can break it as many times as you like...Enjoy
http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/12/acer-aspire-one-aa1backup.html

 

[kenny825507]

perhaps a admin user could move relevant details of the restoration from scratch and backup into a more relavant space say under acer recovery linux as i think as a novice to linux it would help other novices out and save a lot of duplicated entries asking the same question as linux with blank screens seem to be a common problem and when looking for a solution many of the url links no longer work maybe the forum could provide a small download area with some of the most common images

i think this sort of approach would help a lot of novices and even experienced users out.

thge information about backup is brialliant unfortunately the aspire i had yesterday has now gone otherwise i would have taken a backup and saved myself two days next time it gets broken.