RWServer’s TechBlog

I bought a refurb (r0xor!) Acer Aspire One D250 off woot.com on November and it died last week, right after the 90 days warranty had lapsed, sigh. Just found this post with info on how to recover:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=40312&view=findpost&p=273705

1. Insert your USB drive/thumb drive into a working windows system. Open up my computer or computer and locate your usb drive and right click and select format. Format the drive with ‘FAT’ file system and not FAT32 (Try to use a small capacity usb stick or a memory card in a reader, ie less than 256mb). Reason being mine would not flash using a 1 gig usb drive but it did using a 128mb sd card in a reader!
2. Download the attached zip file D250 Recovery.ZIP
3. Extract the files to the root directory of the USB Flash Drive.
4. Turn off the Aspire One and make sure that the power adapter and battery are disconnected from the netbook.
5. Plug in the USB stick to any port on the failed Aspire One
6. Whilst pressing Fn+ESC plug the power adaptor in (note battery is not installed)
7. Keep pressing Fn+ESC and then press the power button once. The power LED will now blink, after a few seconds let go of the Fn+ESC keys, it will now initiate the BIOS update, DO NOT INTERRUPT IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
8. After about 2 minutes, the power LED will stop blinking and the Aspire One will turn off. The BIOS is now complete.
9. IF the unit DID NOT REBOOT BY ITSELF, wait a further 5 – 7 minutes before rebooting the unit as the BIOS may still be flashing.
10. Now the unit is off remove the USB drive you used to flash, Install battery and power lead and turn on.
11. You should have a working laptop

The rapidshare link in that post is broken but it is probably just the bios files from Acer website. Just go find bios for D250 and download it.

I tried something like this but with a 2Gb usb drive. Now off to find a 128Mb one and a windows system to format it in FAT :-/