Acer aspire bootup problem

[Avionker]

SWMBO is experiencing some trouble with her Acer Aspire One 722 P1VE6.

The other day it had a small brush with gravity. All seemed fine until it was shut down, 2 days later, and then didn't want to boot up again.

A message appeared "No bootable device detected". A quick look revealed that the case underneath the machine was not sitting correctly. This was removed and the plug to the HDD was reseated. Subsequent attempts to boot resulted in the message "Check cable connection PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE ROM"

After a reformat all appeared as normal except that, yes you guessed it, it will not boot up from shutdown, hibernate is fine. After a restart or shutdown the Check cable connection message reappears.

I don't want to rip it apart to much as it is still under warranty, but my suspicion is that something on the motherboard has been displaced when the little tyke "jamp" off the windowsill.

Any ideas how best to proceed will be appreciated.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Sounds like a fault on the hard drive
Get it RMA d. ASAP and say nothing about the drop

[ExGrunt]

PXE is a network boot protocol which 'usually' kicks in after a device has failed to read its local hard drive.

You might want to try to boot the acer with a bootable usb stick.

See here for an example of how to create a bootable USB using fedora linux:

How to create and use Live USB - FedoraProject (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB)

HTH

EG

[Mike-Bracknell]

As Milo says, use the warranty and mention nothing of the indiscretion.

[Avionker]

As Milo says, use the warranty and mention nothing of the indiscretion.

Yes M-B, this is my preferred option as well but..... SWMBO has an honest streak and a conscience to boot. Plus she is worried that they somehow will know that it was dropped and they will refuse to cover the repair cost.

She has managed to get it boot from a USB stick using Ubuntu, we'll see how it goes.

[Saab Dastard]

You could buy a replacement hard disk, test to see if it's just the HDD or something upstream.

SD

[Milo Minderbinder]

Look, its an Acer
if you don't RMA it now, you'll be kicking yourself a month after the warranty runs out when the motherboard delaminates and fails.
Acer laptops have built in obselecence. Do anything you can to get around that
Acers are very much built to a price, with all the implications that statement brings. More to the point, they expect them to be RMAd

[Avionker]

Well here we are several months later.

SWMBO eventually decided that the HDD was indeed fritzed. A replacement HDD was bought over the internet and installed. By this time SWMBO had decided that she was going to go down the Ubuntu route and not bother with Win 7.

However, after struggling along for a while and hijacking my laptop whenever my back was turned, it has been decided that Win 7 should make a comeback.

My question is what is the easiest way to do this? Her Acer has no DVD drive so USB is the only method of loading. As I understand it we can load Win via a USB stick using an ISO file? If this is correct where can we download an ISO file other than from the Microsoft site which requires that you buy it from them? We have a product key, on a sticker on the bottom of her laptop, so we should be able to activate the software when it's downloaded and installed I believe.

Any help, in the form of a dummies guide preferably, will be appreciated.

Windows 7 Home premium 32 bit is what we're after.

[izod tester]

Here you are:

Windows 7 ISO x86 and x64 Official Direct Download Links (Ultimate, Professional and Home Premium) « My Digital Life (http://www.mydigitallife.info/windows-7-iso-x86-and-x64-official-direct-download-links-ultimate-professional-and-home-premium/)

[Milo Minderbinder]

get a USB DVD drive and run the disk from there
trying to run an ISO file from a USB drive, or create a bootable USB drive from an ISO image is going to cause you pain
The ISOs of some versions of Win7 are downloadable from Digital River. However, not that of Win7 starter, which is the most common version on an Aspire One. As it was never offered as a consumer installable item, theres no download - except through joining Technet or MSDN (not an option for you)

So....you may well have to buy a copy of windows. Unless......Most Acer Ones I've seen were actually supplied with a recovery DVD. Unusual for Acer I agree, but for the netbooks they seemed to supply them

But the first thing is, check the Windows CofA on that machine and let us know exactly which version of Windows is named on it

[Avionker]

izod tester

Thank you for the link.

MM

Windows 7 Home Prem OA, although the OA is a little hard to read I'm pretty sure that's what it says. Definitely Win 7 Home Prem 32 bit though.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Unfortunately the labels never say whether the OS is 32-bit or 64-bit, though the keys are interchangeable
32 bit iso can be downloaded from
http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58996.iso
64 bit iso
http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58997.iso

Burn the ISO to DVD, and use it along with a USB DVD drive to boot the machine and reinstall windows

I expect that you won't be able to activate the product key online, but will have to phone Microsofts robot to do it. Thats normal for an Acer product key

edit
both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers are online from Acer at
http://www.acer.co.uk/ac/en/GB/content/drivers
just follow the path through the grid
netbook > Aspire One > AO722 > operating system