Help with BIOS??

SnowWhiterThanWhite

Hi,

I have an Acer Aspire One running Linux.

I haven't used it for a while, and whilst it powers up OK with the power lead, it won't power up using battery power. When the netbook is on & I access the battery settings, they state that the battery is 100% charged.

I've googled and found that this is a common issue & have tried the various techniques without success.

Looks like I will have to update the BIOS in order to solve the issue.

Could anyone please offer me BASIC step by step instructions on how to do the following:

1. From the support home page, click Netbook and select your product.
2. Click confirm.
3. Click on the BIOS tab and download and extract the latest BIOS for the netbook.
4. The files required will be in the Dos_Flash subdirectory.
5. Rename the BIOS file from 3310.fd to zg5ia32.fd.
6. Copy zg5ia32.fd and Flashit.exe to the USB flash drive
7. Ensure that the AC adapter is plugged in.
8. Insert the USB flash drive into a USB port.

So far, all I've done is downloaded the file where it is sat on my PC in the downloads folder. I don't understand what 'extract' means, or how I access the Dos_Flash subdirectory?

Also, why does the BIOS file need to be renamed?

Thanks for any help

Toxteth_OGrady

The file you downloaded will be zipped (compressed). If you right-click on it you should see a menu item "extract to." Choose somewhere in your Home folder e.g. documents. If your flavour of Linux doesn't have a GUI for unzipping use the terminal (see http://linux.about.com/od/commands/a/blcmdl1_unzipx.htm for help).

Once extracted browse to where you extracted it to (e.g. Documents) and you should see a new folder called "Dos_flash." Open it and look for the 3310.fd file. Right click on it, select 'rename' and change it to zg5ia32.fd
Follow instructions 6, 7 and 8.

WARNING: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE EVERYTHING IMPORTANT BACKED UP TO AN EXTERNAL DEVICE BEFORE ATTEMPTING A BIOS FLASH

SnowWhiterThanWhite

Thanks for that, will try later today. There is nothing of anything important stored on the ACER, but, it all goes horribly wrong, is it easy to restore back to factory settings? I do have a disc which came with the acer, but no disc drive.

Thanks

Toxteth_OGrady

You also need to follow instruction 9 - 13 that you didn't include in your OP (pasted below from http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3288/kw/flashit.exe):

9. Press and hold down the Fn and the Esc keys together and press the power button.
10. When the netbook's power light comes on, wait a few seconds and release the Fn and Esc keys.
11. After the keys have been released the power light will start to blink.
12. During the BIOS update process the display will be blank.
13. Let the unit run and after approximately 1 to 7 minutes, the unit should reboot and the BIOS will be updated.

The answer to your restore question can be found here:

http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2631

:cool:

TOG

SnowWhiterThanWhite

Sorry, more help req'd please:

I only have one flash drive, which, for some reason, doesn't seem to be recognised by either the Aspire or my Laptop.

Can I use an external hard drive instead (I do use this to do regular laptop backups to this hard drive)

Also, although the Aspire loads up, when I click on the browser icon (Firefox pre-loaded) nothing happens?

I think I may need to completely reload the OS, but, the Aspire doesn't have a dvd drive - can I hook up my laptop to the Acer?

Don't really know where to go from here, do I try & update BIOS or just go straight to reloading the OS? (And all this because I allowed the battery to become completely discharged!)

Any ideas??

Toxteth_OGrady

What format is your USB stick? Plug it in in, browse to Computer, right click on the flash drive and look in properties. It will say something like FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. If it is NTFS that'll probably be why it won't do the BIOS update. If you have nothing of importance on it try to reformat to FAT (this will wipe all the data on it) and start again.

I suspect the laptop needs to be power OFF before you start Step 9.

If you are convinced you need to do the BIOS update then try that first. The BIOS and the OS are completely separate (generalization) so your inability to open Ffox will have nothing to do with the BIOS.

SnowWhiterThanWhite

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

What format is your USB stick? Plug it in in, browse to Computer, right click on the flash drive and look in properties. It will say something like FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. If it is NTFS that'll probably be why it won't do the BIOS update. If you have nothing of importance on it try to reformat to FAT (this will wipe all the data on it) and start again.

I suspect the laptop needs to be power OFF before you start Step 9.

If you are convinced you need to do the BIOS update then try that first. The BIOS and the OS are completely separate (generalization) so your inability to open Ffox will have nothing to do with the BIOS.

Hi, when I go to 'my computer' the flash drive isn't there? I have used it before for work, so I know it does have an old powerpoint presentation on it which I put on a year or so again, using a different PC, and transferred the files between home & work-cannot understand why my PC won't recognise the drive though? Can I use the external HD to do the BIOS upgrade or should I just buy a new flash drive tomorrow, and if the latter, does it matter what size I get?

Toxteth_OGrady

If you put FlashIt.exe and the BIOS .fd file in the root of your external drive and then try steps 8 - 13 it may work.

If you need to get a USB stick, as long as its capacity is greater than the combined file sizes of FlashIt and the .fd you'll be fine. I can't imagine them being more than a few megs.

:cool:

TOG

SnowWhiterThanWhite

Hi,

got my hands on a memory stick today, followed the instructions & copied the 2 files (after renaming them) onto the memory stick as directed . Put the USB memory stick into the Acer & did the FN & ESC, switched it on - it did take a while to load & I thought it had done something, but, the battery is still showing 100% charged, when in fact, it is still completely dead!

What am I doing wrong?

Toxteth_OGrady

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