Black Screen, No HD Activity After Restart - Upgraded RAM

I have an Acer Aspire One D255. I spent a long time and finally upgraded my RAM from 1GB to the max of 2GB. After the upgrade, I booted up the computer and it was fine, went straight to Windows 7 Starter with absolutely no problems. I played around and even restarted twice successfully.

However, about 3 hours later, I tried restarting the computer and it shut down fine but when it rebooted, it was just a blank screen and there was no hard drive activity even though I can hear the fan going. I have to press and hold the power button for 5 seconds to force it to shut down and boot up again and 9 out of 10 times that would fix it.

I tried shutting down instead of restarting and it's the same.

 

Re: Black Screen, No HD Activity After Restart - Upgraded RA

I can think of two possible reasons for the black screen
1. After upgrading the RAM in my D250 for the first time, I had the same issue, re-seated the original RAM and it worked fine, then re-installed the new, upgraded RAM and it worked. I am unsure of the problem, but removing and reinstalling the new RAM made all the difference. I didn't have another problem until I made my D250 RAM Upgrade video for YouTube. The black screen reappeared, but this time all I did was remove and reinstall the RAM. Haven't had a problem since.

2. Nearly all the AAO's suffer from the same hereditary problem. A black screen will occur at random after the system has been powered down. The general fix for the problem is to blind-flash the latest BIOS version from a USB stick. When I had to do mine (about a week after I bought it) an Acer Tech Support rep walked me through it over the phone, whilst the downloaded "crisis recovery" files also had well-written instructions. You will also find similar/same instructions both here in the forums and through a google search.

Hope this helps!

 

Re: Black Screen, No HD Activity After Restart - Upgraded RA

Thanks for the response Swarvey!

I opened my D255 back up (I'm a pro at it now ) and did switch out the RAM back to the original 1GB and the netbook booted perfectly fine. Just to be sure, I booted and rebooted 5 times without any issues. I reinstalled the 2GB and the problem returned instantly! I put the 1GB back and it's fine again.

Just as I was about to write it off as "bad RAM", I noticed that the original 1GB RAM that came with the D255 is a PC3-10600S while the 2GB RAM I bought is a PC3-8500s (as stated on Acer's own website) :shock:

I'm not a newbie nor am I an expert on computer hardware but I don't imagine the speed of the RAM having TOO much impact unless the motherboard is particularly picky right?

Should I buy a PC3-10600S RAM just to be safe? Could that be the problem?

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BTW how could I "blind-flash" my BIOS? I'm relatively new to the Windows/PC world as I've been using Macs for the past 20 years with limited Windows exposure

 

Re: Black Screen, No HD Activity After Restart - Upgraded RA

Yeah there's a few posts around here atm about what Acer says works, and the truth (what actually works). You more than likely need a compatible 10600 RAM chip for it to function properly. I noticed that you mentioned your original RAM was 10600S, the S probably means a Single-Sided module, basically it only has chips on one side (double sided means there's chips on both sides of the RAM module). So really, you probably don't NEED a 10600 module, moreso just a single-sided module. I'd go with a 10600 as it's clock speed is faster.

Blind flashing is a method of flashing the BIOS without actually being able to see what you're doing. It's usually only used when the AAO's hit their hereditary problem of the Black Screen of Death. Basically one day you might shut your machine down, or reboot it for Windows updates and it will refuse to turn back on. You'll hear the fan, maybe see the HDD light flash once or twice, but otherwise nothing. From this point on you'll need to be able to blind-flash the BIOS back to a working state. There's threads on here about it, so just search for blind flashing and you'll get the information you need.

Before I say something here that I may get my head bitten off over, I'm not pro-windows or anti-mac, i'm pro-PC (after all a PC can run Windows, MAC, DOS, Linux etc, the Mac's I've played with only run Mac OS or at a stretch and after much sweat and beer, Linux). So really blind flashing BIOS technically isn't anything purely for WIndows machines, in this case it's just a safety feature that the BIOS manufacturers have build in as a failsafe, should the BlackSOD appear.

 

Re: Black Screen, No HD Activity After Restart - Upgraded RA

Another reason it will not start is that usually you must enter the BIOS (OR SETUP f2) settings. Don't change anything, just EXIT SAVING CHANGES for the computer to recognize the new memory. At least that is what I do when working on desktops. Not knowing the specs of this particular model I do not know what speeds it can handle.

 

Re: Black Screen, No HD Activity After Restart - Upgraded RA

Never had to do that in the entire time i've been working on computers. Never heard of anyone else ever doing it either. Either way the new RAM worked for the op a few times and then decided to BlackSOD. It's just a compatibility issue, or a spec of dust on the contacts, it's amazing what dust can do.