Save mah netbook!

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 :)