My Asus Eee 900A froze, somewhat ironically, while browsing tech talk. Upon restarting manually, the BIOS failed to load, so all I got was a blank screen. I've tried resetting the CMOS and taking out and putting back in the RAM, as suggested in Asus' forums, to no avail. It seems that the solid state hard drive somehow died, since that light does not flash on startup and I have no other clues. What are the chances of that? Anyone experience anything similar?Any suggestions?

8/11/2010 8:33:00 PM

how old is it? The 900 series was like the first out the gate. 4+ years on a first-gen solid state drive sounds like it may be time for a replacement.

8/11/2010 8:45:34 PM

My 901 is chugging hard, stutters and siezes up regularly. I have a feeling the ssd slowly dying has a lot to do with it here too.

Shame, but ill probably hold out for a good android tablet if I buy anything new.

But if the bios failed, it might be worse than ssd, otherwise I'd recommend booting an OS off SD card, or hell, even installing android.

8/11/2010 10:39:16 PM

It's no more than 2 years old in my hands, but it was refurb, so who knows. I'd boot off anything if I could, but I can't even get a bios screen to come up. Anyone know what would cause that? Why would the bios be inhibited by a hard drive failure? I think something else is at play.

8/12/2010 11:39:41 AM

UPDATE

So I left the thing alone for a day and then attempted to start it up again. Voilà. It started normally. So I use it for a few minutes. BAM. It freezes again in the same manner as before. Try restarting it, and of course not even the bios screen this time. I opened the thing up to see if there was any visible
damage/loose connections or parts in the casing and found no clues.


My guess

the mobo got a shot from a stray voltage spike and I was lucky to get the thing to start again in the first place

Final verdict:

screwed

8/12/2010 9:54:31 PM

are you sure it's not a bad power adapter?

8/13/2010 8:24:09 AM

Wasn't using the power adapter the last time. I figured that was a possibility so I tried battery power only.

8/13/2010 4:05:25 PM

Try batter out and using power adapter?

8/13/2010 4:27:57 PM

First time that's how it happened^

I think I'm just SOL.

Guess I'll just wait for an Android/Ubuntu tablet.

8/13/2010 5:44:41 PM

Ok...was just able to start it again and there are some other problems. Certain keys don't work, including Q, U, and the Up Arrow. Methinks this mobo is fukt.

8/13/2010 5:48:12 PM

i was hoping this thread would be about netbooks as a category of electronic devices being dead

since it's not, i have nothing to offer

8/13/2010 5:54:16 PM

This thing hasn't frozen again, yet. I reset some settings in the BIOS. Still having the keyboard trouble, including various numbers not working.

I'm gonna try to flash the bios at some point in the next few days.

I've been trying to do some research, is it possible for a virus to cause BIOS damage? I'm using ubuntu netbook remix, fwiw. Some weird things have been happening, I thought I heard sound playing from the netbook uncommanded as well, but it could have been my imagination. FISHY THOuGH.

8/13/2010 8:38:33 PM

possible, but extremely rare to say the least. If you survived a lightning strike or two this week, I'd point to it being the problem.

I am curious to see what the actual problem is. Now it does sound like you got hit by lightning or something. I've had that sound thing (mine was like a constant hum) on a cooked system before.

8/14/2010 2:38:03 PM

Yeah, now it seems to have no problem booting, but I have various keys that appear to be dead, including the letter "u", which I've been pasting while typing this lol.

The keys that are not functional are not working in the bios menu either, so I'm thinking either the BIOS is screwed or, worse, the mobo in general has problems, the latter of which seems more likely.

Lame.

but at least functional for most tasks.

8/14/2010 9:26:51 PM

update the bios on it.

my massage therapist had one of those (i think it was the exact same model) and about a year ago it had the same thing happen. turned out a bios upgrade (which can be done via thumb drive easily) fixed the issue. i got a free session out of it (woo).

a lot of people have the problem you mention, just google (even lots of youtube vids on it).

heres some old instructions that should still work for it (obv you'd be using a newer version of the BIOS from asus website):
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20081007042339265&board_id=20&model=Eee+PC+900A/Linux&SLanguage=en-us&page=1

8/15/2010 9:53:50 AM

^ Thanks, but now I'm having trouble starting it again when before it was
booting on every attempt. Strange. I'll let you know if flashing works.

8/16/2010 7:24:39 PM

Can't get the damn thing started again.

Of course right when I'm ready to flash the bios.

8/18/2010 8:00:25 PM

Figured out a way to start it when it seems like it's bricked, flashed the BIOS, reinstalled the OS, and I still have the failed keys problem. Also seems to be some I/O errors on the SSD, so at this point I'm guessing it's a surge that caused the problems and there's no way to fix it

8/18/2010 10:39:58 PM