Acer Aspire One BSOD Repair Not Working

I have a Acer Aspire One, AOA 150. I was using it one evening and it turned off on it's own. I assumed the battery had died so I plugged it in. I tried to restart it and got the same response as most with the corrupt BIOS issue. i.e. the screen never comes on, the power light and fan come on but that's it.

After looking up the responses online I decided to try the BIOS flash approach. I load the 2 files on a freshly (FAT)formatted jump drive, rename the one to ZG5IA32.FD, start with the netbook off, insert the jump drive, press and hold FN+Esc, press power, then release all three. The flash drives light comes on but doesn't flash and the power light flashes but never stops or reboots. I have tried this with multiple flash drives but always have the same response.

Any suggestions outside replacing the motherboard would be helpful. Thanks!

 

I take a look at this later tonight. Can you give a link to where you downloaded the BIOS files? Also give the exact model number of the netbook from the tag on the bottom (I'd want any digits after 150 such as 150-1570, just to make sure that if flashing the BIOS is needed that you have the correct files)

 

AOA 150-1777

i went to the Acer Support site and chose netbook>Acer Aspire>AOA 150>Confirm. From there I chose BIOS and downloaded version 3310.

Thanks for looking into it.

 

You certainly seem to have done everything correctly for the flash procedure. It looks like you are following the instructions found here at Acer. The only thing it says slightly differently is to release the power button and keep FN+ESC pressed for another second or two. But if the power button blinks during the supposed flash process you've probably been successful at starting the process.

Two thoughts to double-check:
1) You have just the two files ZG5IA32.FD and FLASHIT.EXE in the root of the jump drive(meaning not in a folder)
2) I just noticed in the instructions they spell Flashit.exe with mixed case letters and in the Dos_Flash folder the file is FLASHIT.EXE, I think I would leave it capital letters when copying to the jump drive.

I'm not sure what else you can try. I'll look try to find a few user-experiences and see if anyone has had difficulty with the procedure that they were able to fix.

 

Yeah, I formatted the drive then copied the 2 files over so it's barebones. I also tried dumping all the files into the root directory in case I had the wrong one.

I did try the alternative way, holding the two buttons down longer. And also pressing power once after it started flashing.

I never touched the flashit file, just copied it over.

I used several different drives because one user had this same issue when using a drive that required a password. I can't figure out why but it seems it doesn't want to find the flash drive.

Again, any suggestions are welcome.

 

I've never had to do this type of emergency flash so I am not familiar with what the machine is looking for (obviously it's looking for those two files which are small enough that there might not be too much flashing of the jump drive necessary). I know the naming is important and that they have to be in the root of the drive.

You have done everything I would have tried so I don't think I can be of much help. I'll try to find other Acer models that require a BIOS flash from USB drive and see if I find any tips but I don't think there is much variety in the instructions.

 

Don't know if this from a single user is useful or not.

 

As much as I would like to report otherwise, that didn't help. Looks like I've got some shopping to do.

Thanks for looking around for me though. I appreciate the effort.

 

Sorry only things I can think as one last try (which you have probably already read/tried):

Try each USB port.
Try formatting USB to FAT16
Try with and without the battery (AC has to be attached)
Try removing the HD and CDROM drive and then retry the flash.