My Netbook has actually done this several times. It will just stop booting. You push the power button and nothing happens. Everything lights up, but no BIOS screen. First thing I thought was “shit”, I’ve kind avoided this things warranty. So I swiftly removed the installed flash drive and extra RAM, and tried to cover up the one melting incident and took it in to the local Incredible Connection where I bought it.

Each time this has happened it has been while using a cheap “SATE/IDE to USB” thing I purchased off E-bay, so I just think my BIOS isn’t a great fan of it, unfortunately this is the only way I can install Windows and the easiest way to install Linux on it. In any case I took it in and they just seemed concerned that I had been trying to install a new OS onto the thing mumbling somethign about this voiding warranties and saying they’d see what they could do.

I’ll admit I was very impressed when they phoned me the next morning and said I could come pick up the Netbook. When I picked it up they said they had just flashed the bios, so the next time this happened I was only slightly less concerned. Googling this I found some instructions here. Ignoring the warning of voiding warranties and tentatively waiting for the flashing light to stop flashing I watched in relief as my PC booted successfully. I’ve posted the instructions below here for if I ever forget and can’t find the link, I have also uploaded a BIOS here so I always have a copy.

My netbook is now happily dual booting Windows XP and Ubuntu 9.10 :)