Dead Aspire One - Went from great to dead in one power cycle

[halberdier25]

Interesting problem:

Last night, I shut down my Aspire One, pulled out the thumbdrive (it was running Ubuntu 8.10 off the thumbdrive) and unplugged it. This morning, I go to turn it on (thumbdrive out), and I forget that I want to put it into Linux. I plug in the thumbdrive. At the XP login screen, I hit "restart" and wait for it to come back so I can hit F12 and boot into Ubuntu, but the screen stays black, and no backlight is on. I use a flashlight to see if the backlight is just dead and pixels are showing up, but nothing. I wait a bit, turn up the volume all the way, type in my password, then repeatedly tap the mute control to see if I hear the XP login sound. Nothing. I go over to my TV and plug the laptop into the VGA cable coming off the TV, and try to get it to show on the TV, but nothing. Now I press and hold the power button, it turns off, and then restart. Still dead. I press and hold the power button, but it won't turn off after even 15 seconds of holding, so I pull out the battery and reattempt. Now it is still dead, but it will turn off when I press and hold the power button.

This one has already been to the shop once for a new screen, and is still under warranty, but I really don't want to lose any data, especially now that I have found no way to back up what data is on there since my last backup.

Ideas?

 

[johnkat]

Hi

I had the same problem with one of my AA1's ( silly me I got 2 of them ) the 120g-512mb-blue-linpus

I was still exploring linpus and getting on ok
I had done the xcfe-setting-show thing and had installed vlc etc

then I thought I'd try XP , downloaded all the drivers etc
used external dvd, all went well, had everything working with xp pro
days later....
and then one time came to open from sleep ......nothing

or rather power light on, fan on, nothing else...... would turn off thats all.

so I tried reflashing the bios
not easy when most of the how2s are wrong

I eventually found out how to do it because I have 2 remember
and once I got the working one reflashed to 3309

I tried same procedure on dead one nada

sent it back to acer UK infoteam devon uk

they replaced the motherboard sent it back very quick
but then the wifi would not reconnect after sleep
also because its a replacement motherboard it had a non valid uuid
ff 16x
and it came back with a warranty void sticker over a screw
meaning that I can not now upgrade the ram

so back to infoteam again


bottom line ACER uk warranty with a third party outfit INFOTEAM

CHEAP AND NOT CHEERFULL


still there will update as and when
johnkat

 

[goaten2000]

I had this problem last night. Have you tried the widely posted macles* fix? I used this last nigth and it worked a treat!

http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer-aspire-one-bios-recovery.html

 

[johnkat]

hi

as stated reflashing did not work 4 me.
the unit was toast.

infoteam claim to have replaced the MB
so something died.

They did replace the MB because My UUID is now FF x16 (ie 32 F's)

which is a non valid UUID

I want them to replace it
but when talking to staff who have no responsibility
what can you do?

as consumers we're all at the mercy of the sharehold

he gets the profit, we get the shoddy goods

peace johnk

 

[goaten2000]

This may have been the case for your AAO (I have read about this with quite a few AAO's here actually) so it clearyly is a common problem however with all due respect, I was responding to the OP and going by the symptoms he described, exactly the same happened to me and the suggestion in the link I posted worked. He mentioned nothing about flashing etc hence me suggesting this.

That's not to say it will work, but the OP did ask for idea's......

 

[jesperth]

OMG - I just want to say THANK YOU for the *macles tip. It totally saved me - My AAO was dead this morning without any prior warning it just wouldn't boot. Power Light would come on, but nothing happened.

I brought it with me to work to turn it in for repair this afternoon but just thought I'd check here first and good thing I did:

I reflashed using an 8GB USB stick FAT32 formatted, using the simple instructions - 2 min. later my AAO is back to life..

This should be a "sticky" somewhere - could probably save lots of people a lot of time.