My Acer Aspire One Battery Will Not Charge - Problem Solved

I haven't touched my Acer Aspire One netbook for several months. A few days ago I tried to power it on but... nothing. The battery has obviously dischared by itself after being left idle for several months. So I hooked it up to the power socket and charged it overnight. To my surprise the next morning, my Acer Aspire One netbook still will not power on as the battery has not been charged.

The following evening I brought my netbook to the shop where I bought it and explained the problem to the shop owner there. He says the battery is damaged and need to be replaced. And it would cost RM200 to get a new battery. I gasped at the steep price. No way I'm spending that kind of money. So I went back home.

It was only a week later I started to do a search on the internet on my problem just to see if anyone else is facing the same thing and what solutions they have for it if any. What I found solved my problem. The solution is to update the BIOS of the Acer Aspire One netbook. It does sound scary to me at first the thought of updating the BIOS as I have never done it before. But I'm glad I did in the end as it worked. My Acer Aspire One battery can now charge again. Here the steps to update the BIOS as I found on the internet which I followed to the tee:

To perform the update to the BIOS:

1. To download the latest BIOS for the netbook, go to the Acer support website here.

2. Once at the Acer support website - Drivers & Download page, click Netbook -> Aspire One.

3. Select your product model which will be either AOA110 ot AOA150.

4. And then below, choose the "BIOS" tab.

5. Click the orange "Down" arrow to download the BIOS.

6. Insert a USB flash drive into a USB port on the netbook.

7. Open the .zip file you downloaded and extract the two files: "3310.fd" in the Dos_Flash folder and "Flashit.exe" onto the root directory of the USB flash drive

8. Rename the BIOS file from "3309.fd" to "zg5ia32.fd".

9. Ensure that the AC adapter is plugged in.

10. Press and hold down the Fn and the Esc keys together and press the power button.

11. The unit's power light will blink once.

12. Release both the Fn and Esc keys.

13. Your netbook screen will stay black for 1-2 minutes.
Don't worry as it will restart. If it doesn't after 3 minutes, then just un-plug the USB flash drive and plug it back in again and press power button

14. When the unit powers on, the BIOS will be updated from the USB flash drive

15. The battery should now be able to hold a charge from now on.

That's it! And you have just saved yourself RM200.

Note: These instructions are only for the Acer Aspire One AOA-110 and the AOA-150 netbook series and should not be performed on any other model.

Alan Wilder Joined Martin On Stage For 'Somebody'

If you're a Depeche Mode fan then this will be big news: Alan Wilder joined Martin on stage for 'Somebody' at the Royal Albert Hall, London, February 17th 2010. He played the piano. He and Martin hugged after. He even hugged Fletch after. It was an unannounced thing and caught everyone by surprise. And what a nice surprise it was. Here are the videos of the historic moment:





Note: A high quality video will be up on Depeche Mode's official website in a couple of days time.

Solution To eBay's "Sorry, you've hit a speed bump!"

Just this morning I was trying to make an immediate payment to a seller for a Dvd I purchased today in eBay but hit the following cryptic message from eBay during payment processing: Sorry, you've hit a speed bump!

Tried several times throughout the morning to make the payment but every time I encountered that annoying useless message.

Finally, I found a workaround and successfully made the payment. Here is the method:

1) Logged in to your PayPal account
2) Click "Send Money"
3) Click "Pay for eBay Items"
4) At this point you will be asked to log on to your eBay account if you're not logged in yet. Log in to your eBay account.
5) You will be presented with a list of eBay items that you won.
6) Select the eBay items that you want to make payment for and then click on "Pay" button


That's it ! The payment will be successfully made.

How To Download YouTube Videos

Here is a simple trick to download and view any videos from YouTube

As you probably know, by default, Youtube doesn't allow users to save/download its videos.

However, with the simple steps outlined below you will be able to save/download a YouTube video to your computer and later share it with your friends or keep it as a collection.

Steps to save/download videos from YouTube:-

1) Highlight and copy the YouTube video URL that you see next to the video.

You can do this by clicking on the URL field (like below), right-click your mouse and select 'Copy'


2) Go to this website: http://keepvid.com/ and paste the video link that you copied from previous step in the field there (like below) and click 'Download' button next to the field.



3) Some download links will appear. Click the Download link for the quality you prefer.

4) Save as "video.flv" to your computer. (Note: You can replace "video" with any name you like, just override it)

That's it !

Congratulations! You have just learned a simple trick to download any YouTube Video you like and play it anytime you want. You don't have to worry about YouTube removing your fav video anymore.

If you think this tip is useful, spread the word !

Can't See Adwords Ads In Firefox ... Solved

I recently noticed that my Firefox stopped displaying any Google Adwords ads in the Google search engine results pages or in any other pages actually. I started to think back to what I have just recently changed to my pc or Firefox that might have caused the problem. I hit a blank. Then I searched online for an answer to this problem.

I promptly found the answer within 2 minutes. I credited this page for the solution to the Adwords ads not showing in Firefox problem.


The Google Adwords ads not showing was due to the AdBlock Plus add-on which I installed recently. It was blocking the Adwords ads. According to the solution on that page, I'd need to find in the upper right corner of my Firefox browser a red stop sign with the initials ABP and then to click on the down arrow right beside the stop sign. After that to click on "Disable on google.com" which I followed. I refreshed the Google search results page next and there they are finally, the Google Adwords ads.

Nokia 5800 Beeping During Calls ... Solved

Recently my Nokia 5800 emits a series of very loud beeps when I was talking on the phone. A quick check on the internet for answers to this problem revealed that the profile setting in my phone, more specifically the Warning tones, need to be changed.

So on my phone, I went to Settings > Personal > Profiles > General > Personalise. Then I set the Warning tones from 'On' to 'Off'.

I made a call after that to my family just to test and sure enough the loud beeps have gone.

Problem solved. Boy, was I relieved. Thought it might have been some bigger problem like some Nokia 5800 bugs that I heard so much about and which may be more troublesome to fix.

Baby Son Learns To Walk

My 13 month old baby son finally learn to walk today. Right on the last day of the year, 2009. He was so overjoyed that he could do it finally. Every time he walked a few steps and fell down again, he would laugh, clapped his tiny hands and then clasped his hands like in prayer, moving them up and down like as if thanking the heavens. He had tried the whole day, starting from early morning onwards and he was getting kinda frustrated before finally he managed it. He was really pushing himself to walk before the new year arrives (as if he knew).

'This Hardware Cannot Be Installed' Error

Recently my PC (running on Windows XP) started having problems with my USB flash drives (actually all USB flash drives as I found out later). My PC can detect them but can't use them. In the Device Manager, they were correctly listed but with an exclamation mark next to it meaning error. I tried to re-install the devices for each respective USB flash drives but encountered a 'This Hardware Cannot Be Installed' error message. I tried re-installing the Microsoft Service Pack 3 as well and no good, the problem still persist. It was really frustrating.

I then search for a solution in some of the Windows XP forums. None of them offered a workable solution until this forum. In one of the solutions posted, it suggested downloading the USBSTOR.inf file. That I followed and downloaded the file from this excellent site which offers .inf files for free download. I put the file in my 'Driver cache' folder under the windows folder.

I then fired up Device Manager, select the problematic flash drive, right-click and select 'Update driver'.

In the 'Hardware Update Wizard' pop-up box that appears, I selected 'Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)' and specified the folder where the downloaded file was located. Click Next ... et viola my woes are gone ! My pc can read my usb flash drive again !

That felt like magic...good magic.

Solution To "MMC could not create the snap-in. The snap-in might not have been installed correctly."

I'm using a Windows XP and tried to open the Device Manager today. To my surprise, I got a "MMC could not create the snap-in" error screen instead (pic):

I recalled that 2 weeks ago I encountered the exact same problem after I ran a third party 'Registry Cleaner' software to fix some device problems my pc was having. That time I solved the problem by re-installing Windows XP.

This time I thought well there must be an easier way to fix the problem. So I searched the Microsoft support site and see if I can find a solution related to the problem. Thanked my lucky stars there was a solution for it. The solution is in this Microsoft support page. It suggested downloading a hotfix to fix the problem. So I downloaded the hotfix and applied it. It worked swell. My Windows XP device manager is working again. No more "MMC could not create the snap-in. " screen. What a relief that was.

Adam Khoo On TVIQ's 'The Millionaire Makers'

I was flipping channels last night on Astro (Malaysia's pay TV) when I chanced upon a segment on Adam Khoo, on TVIQ channel. It was a program called 'The Millionaire Makers'. For the uninitiated, Adam Khoo is a Singaporean entrepreneur, a best selling author, peak performance trainer and a self-made millionaire by the age of 26.

From the program, I learnt that Adam Khoo's a huge Star Wars fan. He even owns the Darth Vader mask with the voice changer and saber which he gladly demonstrated in front of the camera. He bought it in Malaysia for around RM 500. He goes on to tell us that when as a kid that he used to have loads of Star Wars toys but of course his mother has threw them all away.

He confesses to enjoying playing Playstation games and was shown playing some Tiger Woods golf game.

At one point he proudly shows off his huge collection of books. I chuckled when I saw some 'Idiot's Guide to ...' books in the collection. He picked one book out from the shelf to show to the camera and my heart skipped a beat when I saw that it's 'Buffetology' by Mary Buffet, the exact same edition that I have. He must have bought it around the same time that I did. Well, but he's now a millionaire and I'm still almost where I was when I bought the book.

We also see that he drives a sporty BMW (hmm, that's not being very frugal) but interestingly his home is pretty tidy ... and bare (I guess that's him being frugal).

Well, I'm glad I came across this little profile segment of Adam Khoo. Got to know some interesting facts and background about my favorite guru. I will keep an eye out for the repeats. Missed the first few minutes.