Power On Problem

I have an A110 that sometimes (most of the time) will not power on when properly. I locks in the start-up sequence about when the hard-drive information is to be displayed on the screen (using normal boot not quick setting in the bios). When the start-up sequence works everything works great. I can even suspend it with out any problems.

- I have tried upgrading the bios to 3304 and problem "spread". It started to freeze in Linux to.
- I use bios version 3109.
- I have tried to disconnect the hard-drive but locket up anyway.
- I tried to remove the extra memory with out any luck.
- I have checkt and recheckt every cable again and again.

I have noticed that the fan starts, stops and then starts again, every time it locks up.

- Rikard

 

Hi Rikard!

I have the exact same problem with my A150. I only had it on for the first time today for 5 mins before it froze. I powered off and on and it sat at the blue screen with aspire one written on it. I attempted to power off on and several times without joy. As it was literally out of the box I have arranged for a replacement to be sent. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried it again and it worked, but like you say it froze again and I had the exact same issue.

I am sorry I do not have a fix. If you have found a fix and it is straightforward, please let me know as there would be no need to get a replacement and I could cancel the collection. It was a very disappointing introduction to my AAO.

Kris

 

Hello, I've got the same problem
Mine is a AA0150, linpus and 3114v Bios
The computer was running with batteries, for an hour, and suddenly it turned off. Tried to turn it on with the power supply, and the screen stays at the blue screen with the acer logo.
This is the second time the problem appears, I will try to restore linpus with the the recovery disc (last time it worked), but that's not the solution !!
Any ideas??
Thanks
Carlos

pd Sorry for my english

 

Hi there!

I have received the replacement A150 today and I cannot believe it but I the same thing has happened again. I switched on the AAO. I put my XD picture card in the multi card reader. I copied the pics over to My Pictures. I was browsing the pics for 10 mins if even and the screen froze. There was no response at all and the cursor would not move either. The HD LED was flickering away and the speed of the fan increased. Absolutely no change after more than 5 mins. I removed the XD card and left it for another 5 mins - no change. I then switched the system off and on and got the aspire one blue screen again. The system restarted itself after 5-10 mins whilst I was on the phone to John Lewis. I would be most grateful for any help.

Cheers!

Kris

 

Yeah, after 5 minutes with the blue screen, the system restarts and now works. Really strange

 

Hi Carlikis!

I have e-mailed details of the issue to Acer UK. If they get back to me with a fix I will keep you posted. It is soo annoying as this is a brand new machine. I'm not willing to put up with it. BTW I know that this is a separate issue, but, the webcam in my new machine is very blurry with movement - is yours the same?

Kris

 

Be careful don't complain too much about all the problems with the Aspire One or you will get a warning from the moderator. They warned me because I complained and suggested everyone should call Acer and demand a solution or money back or a replacement. My AAO did the same thing. On day two it would not power on and has now been with Acer for twenty days and swill waiting for parts to repair it.

 

The blue 'Aspire ONE' screen in Linpus is when it checks the disk (runs fsck) after an unclean shutdown, it might take a few minutes because the SSD is slow. I'm not sure what the problem with the OP's system is but the above is normal.

 

Hi KrisD!

I personally found Linpus unstable when working with large amounts of data (it did crash quite a lot), but in my experience if the SSD light is on, it IS doing 'something'. What it's doing can take a fair while due to the speed. One of the reasons I changed from Linpus though was that during intensive tasks it would lock up and need a reboot, when this stuff happens it doesn't necessarily indicate bad hardware.

I hope you can sort your ONE out and if I can be of any help (my business is problematic PCs and laptops etc...) I will help you.

@oldsouth:

I think your issue may be different... I too had the problem with 'power but no POST' from my AAO and in my case it wasn't recoverable, so it went back.

 

Hi KrisD
Thanks for the reply
Webcam works well, not high quality, but the movement is smooth
About the problem with the power on: I did what you said, waited for 5-10 minutes with the blue screen, then the machine restarted itself, and apparently eveything worked well, but after 1 h more or less, with the battery status on 40%, the screen froze (black screen). I swithed off, swith on and again blue screen, until 5-10 minutes, and the machine again restarted itself, and now works again.
It seems that when the blue screen appears, the computer is doing something (there's fan and hard disk noise (mine is a 120gb HD)), then the screen turns black but the power light is on and still there'es activity in the machine ( like dj205 states).
Not shure if it's a hardware problem ( I don't think overheating or multitask, I was websurfing, just the firefox opened) or a software problem, I will try to run another linux distro on it to check
Regards
Carlikis

 

For some reason, when the battery goes below 5%, the AAO is supposed to do a normal shutdown, but it doesn't. Specifically, if the lid is closed and it DIDN'T sleep, this happens (and, possibly, other times as well). If the shutdown isn't done, the machine will do what is called an "fsck" on the next power-up. The file system on the SSD is something called "ext2", chosen because it has better SSD characteristics (as compared to it's sibling, ext3). Ext3 is journaled, which means that fsck takes just a few seconds, and the machine is ready to go. However, it can wear the SSD filesystem down faster. Ext2 takes longer with the fsck (with the 120GB or 160GB hard disk, it can take many minutes!).

During this activity, the machine sits at the blue AAO screen, seemingly hung. When the fsck operation is complete, Linpus is restarted, and sees a "clean" hard disk, and boots normally.

So, the actual defect is that the shutdown did not trigger properly on low battery! A secondary defect is that there should be a "fsck status screen". The good news is that both of these issues can be resolved by software patches...

If using the hard disk AAO with Linpus, it is possible to convert the ext2 drive to ext3. I haven't pursued this option yet; my AAO has simply trained me to watch the battery, and lid-close.

 

Hi Fweigel,

Can you give us more information on the solution to this problem or the patches which will either make the AAO shut down correctly (to avoid running "fsck") or to at least show that "fsck" is running, rather than just showing the blue screen.

Mine seems to suffer this problem quite often when the kids run it down, I'm not very experienced with linux but I would like a solution, this is the only thing that is disapponting about my netbook.

 

Hi Fweigel,

I'd love to hear how this can be done too. I've had the same issue a number of times. I tried switching off the AAO and restarting not realising it was doing anything at all. At least now I know that it's working its way to a solution, albeit slowly.

thanks

 

Ok, guys

Since there have been two requests for a solution, I'll cook one up. First, I'll tackle the no display during fsck -- because if you KNOW what's happening, you won't be quite as annoyed.

Then, I'll tackle the shutdown on low power issue (also, this appears to itself be two separate problems... and I want to think about that a bit more.)

fweigel

 

The solution for Linpus hard drive versions ONLY (do not do this with the SSD model):

Open a terminal

sudo tune2fs -j /dev/sda1
sudo mousepad /etc/fstab

Edit the line beginning with "/dev/sda1", and change "ext2" to "ext3".

Restart your Aspire One.

The next time you do a "checked start", it will come up in a few SECONDS longer (not MINUTES).

 

Add one more edit:

sudo mousepad /etc/rc.d/rc.S

and change "fsck.ext2" to "fsck.ext3" -- sorry about missing that last message.