A friend asked me to take a look at their Acer Aspire One as it wouldn`t boot for them. They would press the power button and it would light up but nothing would happen after that. I haven`t had too many net books in the shop, and I dislike the form factor so I don`t own one of my own, so I was light on ideas. A quick search lead me to a post that had the same issue my friend was seeing.
The Fix:
The Aspire One has a built-in BIOS recovery routine, making it possible to flash the BIOS even if the system doesn’t boot anymore. It’s only meant for emergencies and may void your warranty, so use at your own risk.
- First format an USB stick with FAT.
- Download the latest BIOS, and put both FLASHIT.EXE and the BIOS file in the root directory of the stick. Rename the BIOS file to ZG5IA32.FD, that’s important.
- Insert the USB stick into the net book.
- Turn the Aspire One off, make sure both battery and AC adapter are connected.
- Press Fn+Esc, keep it pressed and press the power button to turn the AA1 on.
- Release Fn+Esc after a few seconds, the power button will be blinking.
- Press the power button once. The Aspire One will now initiate the BIOS flash, do not interrupt it under any circumstances. After a while the power button will stop blinking, and the AA1 will reboot shortly after.
- The BIOS has been flashed and all settings reset to default.
I followed the process and the Aspire One did exactly what it was supposed to do. I`d day the entire fix took 20min, from beginning the search to finishing the boot into XP.
