Aspire One ZG5 with no hd bad bios update

Hi, I just got an aspire one ZG5 with no hard drive and supposedly a bad bios flash attempt off a thumbdrive, I am pretty handy with computers and electronics so figured it was worth a few bucks as a gamble to try and fix, but with the bios thing and it missing a hard drive I am not exactly sure where to start, I took the unit apart to access the hd tray, have a spare hd here I can pop into it no prob, once back together with a blank formatted hard drive in it, I am guessing the bios is where I need to start before even messing with trying to load anything on it OS wise.

Based on the above info what would your steps be to try and bring this back to life? Seems in pretty good overall condition, just minus a hard drive and a bios flash that went bad (dunno what they did wrong), so hoping if I do things in the right order here I can possibly get this working again.

Thanks for any help,

Bill

 

Try blind flashing again from a thumb drive. Who knows, you might have more success than the last owner did.

But if it was a terrible failure and destroyed the BIOS, your best bet might be to just have a replacement pre-programmed chip reinstalled.

 

Stick in the formatted empty hard drive, put back together, download the bios from acer site and follow instructions on that to try and get bios back, then mess with reading up on how to get an os onto it via thumbdrive?

Thanks for the reply here btw,

Bill

 

First thing's first. HDD/SSD, no HDD/SSD, blank or formatted. The machine's not going anywhere until it has a working BIOS. Focus on getting that done first, then you can suss out how to get an OS onto the machine.

Easiest way to get an OS on it, buy an external USB DVD-RW drive to use your original install media (CD/DVD)
If you don't want to buy one, then you're going to have to mess around with getting a bootable USB Thumb drive to install from.

 

Figured since I have it all apart already, stick the formatted blank drive in, put back together, read up on how to flash the bios (grabbed it and all the drivers and other files from the acer website), and get that bios back up, if i can't get that i guess its toast or will have to send in for service or something, i think I can read around and figure out how to do the os onto flashdrive to load onto the drive I just wanted to confirm if I did it that way (stick drive in since its apart, then mess with bios) that it was the right steps to go by etc.

Crossing fingers I can get that bios going tho, he said he tried to do it and just created a pc that wont boot now, so he removed his hard drive (for his data) and sold the machine here cuz he didn't want to mess with it anymore (didn't need it) will see what luck if any I have on it...

Bill

 

If blind flashing fails, search the forums here. Some users have reported getting a replacement BIOS chip for as little as about $20 (guessing USD) These little AAO's can take a lot of punishment. So don't call it quits just yet.

 

Been crazy busy the last few weeks but tonight I finally got the hd in and put the unit back together again, I had gone to the acer website and grabbed all the drivers and bios, (edited) see below for my attempts and issues...
Bill

 

Hit google a bit found this, followed it to the letter, been about 10 mins now power light is still just flashing, will let it go a bit more see if anything happens...

Updating the BIOS will require a USB flash drive to store the BIOS information on during the update. To perform the update to the BIOS:

1. Go here and download and extract the latest BIOS for the netbook.
2. Rename the BIOS file from 3310.fd to zg5ia32.fd.
3. Copy zg5ia32.fd and Flashit.exe to USB flash drive
4. Ensure that the AC adapter is plugged in.
5. Insert the USB flash drive into a USB port.
6. Press and Hold down the Fn and the Esc keys together and press the power button.
7. When the unit's power light comes on wait a few seconds and release the Fn and Esc keys.
8. After the keys have been released the power light will start to blink.
9. During the BIOS update process the display will be blank.
10. Let the unit run and after approximately 1 to 7 minutes, the unit should reboot and the BIOS will be updated.

If the unit fails to reboot, or the BIOS was not updated sucessfully, try the steps again.

Note: These instructions are only for the Acer Aspire One AOA-110 and the AOA-150 netbook series and should not be performed on any other model Acer Aspire One.

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Ok if that is correct, i did rename the 3310.fd bios and copied over the flashit.exe file form the dos flash folder, both onto a freshly formatted thumbdrive (done in fat mode), put in followed the steps of fn esc keys power up, wait a few secs release fn esc keys, power light flashes but it seems to go nowhere...(flashdrive is not reacting either).

So far a good 10-15 mins in its just still flashing power, I will retry this a few times and see if it "takes" but if I am missing something please lmk... Also keeping in mind the hd in the unit is blank formatted, (haven't got that far to install anything on it yet) just trying to restore this corrupted bios first...

Bill

 

Found this video on youtube,



sure enough I am doing everything as instructed, yet when it gets to the 8 min mark of the video (releasing the fn and esc keys) in the video the flash drive kicks in and is doing something with the 2 files on it, on mine the power is still flashing but the flashdrive itself isn't flashing or appearing to do anything.

Tried all 3 different usb ports, and the flash drive does flash blue in the computer when its doing something, so I am wondering what else I can check or do to this to try and get that bios to reset?

 

Has there ever been situations where it wouldn't flash off a certain usb drive but it did work off another usb drive?

I have another spare one somewhere i can format and try, just wondered if it ever happens that way? No issues with this thumbdrive but heck I dunno just trying to think what else I can try....

 

I'm pretty sure I have read somewhere that certain USB flash drives have failed. I know for a fact that my Lexar 2Gb drive works. Try the other and see if you can get it going. I'm pretty sure you need a particular size, or are limited to smaller sized flash drives for it to work.

 

thanks on that, its cheaper to try the 3 drives i have here before ordering a bios replacement chip and taking it all apart to replace it, altho I do have a lot of soldering experience so I am pretty sure i can swap that chip out fairly easy, finding the chip might be harder than swapping it hehe...

 

I took my 8 gb corsair unit and reformatted it in fat 32 (gave me no other options in format menu but fat32) loaded the files onto it and tried a few more times, but the flash drive never "activates" and flashes...

I have another few drives I am gonna try for fun but not looking too good here... guessing its that bios chip replacement as my next attempt / step unless I get lucky on one of these other flash drives working...

 

Well I tried 4 different flash drives from 1 to 8 gb following the instructions above, but the flash drive never "kicks in" and does anything, the files are renamed and not in a folder, drives are fresh format in fat format mode, so is the next step for this the replacement bios chip?

 

Well I can't say for certainty, but that's what I'd be doing next. You might find a helpful link or two in the BIOS section.

 

Ok went to ebay to order up a bios chip but they want model of mb and bios chip info, don't laugh but i cant find the bios chip! Anyone know where the bios chip is located on the asus aoa150 zg5?

Also on that whole flashdrive bios updating thing I was trying, is there something I need to do to the jump drive to make it bootable besides put the two files in the root (vs in a folder)?

Kinda bummed on this might have bit off more than I can chew, altho i think i can do the soldering just gotta FIND where the chip is on the board to be able to order and replace it.

 

Hi Bill, did you ever get the machine working? I'm kinda of in the same situation where I can't flash the bios correctly. I thinking about buy a bios chip from ebay to replace. Let me know how it went

 

I would also be interested to know if anyones ever fixed this, mine flashes but never reads the usb stick