NetbookTech

As I mentioned a few days ago, Acer Aspire One owners had some good news for the month of September. Acer released a BIOS update that seems to have fixed the noisy fan issue that many owners were complaining about. Now the bad news. In order to update the BIOS (version 3304), you’ll need to boot the netbook into DOS.

Now since the Acer Aspire One lacks a DVD/CD-ROM drive, the only viable way to boot into DOS is to boot from a USB flash drive. I followed the recommendations from the Aspire One User webpage here and managed to update the BIOS fairly painlessly. The page actually links to instructions laid out over at macles* here. For the sake of providing instructions in one location, I thought it would be helpful for all of you to read/see what I did.

Before you begin, here’s what you’ll need:

• A copy of UNetbootin (available for Linux or Windows – I used the Windows version)
• An available USB flash drive (I had plenty of CES 2008!)
• A copy of the Aspire One 3304 BIOS update

The following steps were performed on Windows Vista

Step 1: Download UNetbootin from the sourceforge website – http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/.

Step 2: Download the Aspire One BIOS update from the following url – http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal20.cfm?recordid=5593&formid=3394&website=AcerPanAm.com&siteid=7117&words=all&keywords=&areaid=2

Step 3: Connect your USB flash drive to an available USB port on your PC

Step 4: Once Windows recognizes the flash drive, remember the drive letter the OS assigned to the flash drive.

Step 5: Start up UNetbootin and then select the following:

• For “Distribution”, select “FreeDOS”
• Skip to the bottom and make sure “Type” is “USB Drive”. Make sure the “Drive:” letter is the one assigned by Windows for the USB flash drive (it was K in my example).
• Here’s a snapshot of what I had selected:

Step 6: UNetbootin will now download the distribution and install FreeDOS on your flash drive.

Step 7: Unzip the downloaded BIOS update to your flash drive

Step 8: Remove the USB flash drive and then connect it to your Aspire One netbook

Step 9: Reboot the Aspire One. When you see the splash screen, press F2 to go into the setup.

 

Step 10: Once in the BIOS, select the Boot Manu and move the USB HDD up above the Hitachi drive.

You’re telling the system to check the flash drive first before the hard drive for a bootable partition. You’ll need to press F5 to move a highlighted selection up and F6 to move a selection down.

Once you’ve moved the USB drive to the top, press F10 to save and exit

Step 11: The Aspire One will now reboot and load up UNetbootin.It will automatically boot into the default OS on the drive which is FreeDOS:

You’ll then see a menu of FreeDOS options. Select option 5 for the FreeDOS Live CD only.

You’ll see an error message about a missing CD-ROM – just ignore that. Once FreeDOS finishes the startup, you’ll be at the “A:\” prompt.

Step 12: To access the BIOS update files, you’ll need to go to drive “C:\” which is actually the contents on your flash drive. Type “C:” and hit ENTER. Than go to the directory where you stored your BIOS update files. If you need to change a directory, type “cd <directory-name>”. If the folder name is “update”, you’ll type “cd update”

Step 13: Make sure your Aspire One is connected to an outlet – the update will not proceed if the Aspire One is running off the battery only. Type “3304.bat” and hit ENTER.

The BIOS will now get flashed to version 3304. Now reboot the system and go back into setup when you see the splash screen by pressing F2. verify in the first screen that the BIOS version is now 3304:

You’re going to change the boot order back to the way it was. It might already be in the proper boot order but it’s a good thing to check anyhow. Make sure the first boot option is the hard drive (unless of course you always want the netbook to check the USB flash drive first).

And.. that’s it! If you’re still in the setup, press F10 to save and exit and then boot into Windows XP and Enjoy!!

Again – many thanks to AspireOneUser.com and the macles* website.