ACER One Netbook not starting up.

Hey everybody,

I have an ACER Aspire one D255e-13648 and when I push the power button is shows the "ACER" logo and then goes to where the solid white - blinking as if it were starting up normally, then it goes black and does nothing.

I can push F2 and it takes me to a screen where it asks what I would like to start up, I choose "Windows 7", then it does what I explained above. I really need help.

Thanks everybody!

Hi

Can you start it in Safe Mode?
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/#windows7

James

Hi James,

I tried but the screen still goes black. I did notice that when I push a key after the screen has gone black the netbook makes a beeping sound.

I did notice that when I push a key after the screen has gone black the netbook makes a beeping sound.

Does it beep whenever you press a key on the keyboard? If not, how many beeps, just one?

What were you doing with the netbook right before the problem started?

A few more 'easy' things to try...

* Power off, unplug the AC adapter, pull out the battery (typically, 2 spring loaded slider switches on the underside of the netbook. Push both and pull out the battery with your third hand LOL)
Count to 10 and put the battery back in, plug in the AC adapter and try booting up.

* If that doesn't work, try booting it up to where you get that black screen and then just leave it for an hour or so (make sure to plug in the AC adapter) and come back and see if it is working (you'd be amazed at how often this works to get into a seemingly dead machine)


I have a similar Acer netbook that I use for Android dev (I replaced the Win7 with Linux). I'll pull that out later today and see if I can come up with any ideas.

In the meantime, a moderator might want consider moving this thread to the Windows 7 subforum.

James

Yes, it beeps every time I press a key.

I was on a website and it froze up. I had to hold down the power button to restart and after that it didn't work. I've got it turned on now and so I'll try leaving it on for an hour.

This thing isn't even a year old yet so I imagine it's still under warranty, but HP gave me a lot of trouble with my laptop that was under warranty and ended up not fixing it for me.

Edit: After being left on for about 15 minutes, it asks me to start windows normally or to do windows startup repair. Starting it normally brings me back to the black screen. Startup repair has me sitting on ACER's desktop background with nothing on it. I can move the cursor though.

Another EDIT: Windows startup repair ran after about 15 minutes. It says No Os files found on disc and it couldn't fix the problem.

Okay, did you try the 'remove battery' suggestion I made above?

If you have or if you try it and get the same result, I'd like to know what version your BIOS is. On my netbook, when the Acer screen pops up when you first power it on, it briefly says at the bottom "Press F2 to enter Setup". Yours may be a different key to enter setup. Press that quickly before the screen changes and it should open the BIOS SETUP UTILITY.

At the bottom of the screen it should have a version number starting with the letter v (mine says "v02.58"). Let us know what it is on your netbook.

Press esc and it should say "Discard configuration changes and exit now?" select OK and press enter and it will proceed with booting without changing anything.

James

Yeah, I tried removing the battery but it didn't do anything.

However, through doing the windows startup repair I've made it to startup repair, system restore, system image recovery, windows memory diagnostic, command prompt, and recovery management. Will any of these fix the "No OS files found on disc" error?

I'll check the BIOS when I restart the netbook again. I don't want to restart it right now because it took me awhile to get to the system restore page.

Yeah, I tried removing the battery but it didn't do anything.

However, through doing the windows startup repair I've made it to startup repair, system restore, system image recovery, windows memory diagnostic, command prompt, and recovery management. Will any of these fix the "No OS files found on disc" error?

I'll check the BIOS when I restart the netbook again. I don't want to restart it right now because it took me awhile to get to the system restore page.

At this point, can you let us know how important the data on it is. Personally, I've gone to great lengths to recover irreplaceable sentimental and financial data for people. It doesn't make sense to do the same kind of troubleshooting if the computer is simply used to surf the net and check Gmail.

The next thing I would try is to
shut it down completely
reboot
wait the 15 minutes or so to the point where it asks start windows normally or do windows startup repair.
choose start windows normally
wait an hour and see what it does.
I'm hoping that it will either magically boot and then we can troubleshoot it
or
It will give us a specific error like "Operating System not found" and then we can troubleshoot that.
Then we can look at recovery or repair options.

That's what I would try but there are some very smart and experienced people who read this forum and you can wait awhile to see if anyone else has a better suggestion or even recognizes the problem and knows the exact fix for it

James

There aren't any files on here that I need. I'd just like to get it running again.

I'll go ahead and try that and see what happens.

Edit: I tried letting it sit there but after a few minutes a blue screen flashed up for one second then the netbook restarted.

Now the question is whether or not there is a hardware error (like the hard drive or the RAM) or is it just corrupt files. Doing a factory reset might not work if it is a hardware error.

You can go with the 'scorched earth' approach and do a factory reset...
http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2631

Or we can try a repair.

Do what you did before to get to the System Recovery options. Try them in this order...

1. Try the 'Startup Repair' option

doesn't work

2. Try the 'System Restore' option

doesn't work

3. Run the 'Windows Memory Diagnostic' option

Comes up clean but still doesn't work.

Then we can talk about what you can try at the 'command prompt' (specifically, checking the hard drive) but we'll be getting real close to the 'scorched earth' option of a factory reset.

Whatever you decide let us know what happens.
James