A friend approached me with an ACER Aspire One netbook with the problem that suddenly its screen went blank. It would power on – but nothing else seemed to work. Screen was blank, hard disk did not seem like it was spinning ….
After some research, I found a potential solution … and it worked. Here are the steps in the hope it helps somebody else too.
- Get a USB flash drive (any size – we need about 3MB). Remember all data from this drive will be deleted. So backup the contents of the USB drive. It is preferable to use a USB drive with an inbuilt light that flickers when the USB drive is being accessed. This is will be useful in a later step.
- Insert the flash drive in another computer (my instructions are for a computer running Windows XP. If your have a computer running a different OS – adapt steps 2, 3, 4 accordingly)
- First close any windows (if they are open) and open My Computer. Locate your Flash Drive, and right click on the drive and select the option “Format…”
- Select the options as ‘File System -> FAT32′, ‘Allocation unit size -> Default allocation size’ and click on the “Start” button
- Download the zip file which contains a Flash File Update. The current latest BIOS version (v.3309) can be found on my site here . However, if you wish, you can check for a later version on the ACER website.
- Extract the two files from the downloaded zip file, and copy them to the flash drive. The two file names HAVE TO BE ZG5IA32.FD (the bios update file) and FLASHIT.EXE (the utility which will flash load the new BIOS onto the netbook).
- Make sure your ACER netbook power is turned off, but the power cable is connected. Remove the USB flash drive from the other computer and insert it in the netbook.
- These next three steps are somewhat tricky. Follow very closely.
- Press the “Fn” AND “Esc” keys and then press the Power button for about 2 seconds.
- Wait for 2 seconds and notice that the green Power LED should be flashing. If it is not – keep the power button pressed till it turns off and redo from step 8.
- Press the Power button again – once only (and do not keep it pressed) . If you have the USB drive with in built activity light, you should notice it flicker for about 1-2 seconds almost immediately after you pressed the Power button. If this does not happen – keep the power button pressed till it turns off and redo from step 8.
- Now – hands off the netbook. Wait for anywhere between 2-6 minutes. The BIOS should get updated and once done – the netbook should start automagically (not a typo
).