Thank you sooooo much I called acer and they actually told me that since my warranty had expired that I would either have to send my computer to Temple, TX (?) to be repaired and it would cost me $99 to do this, OR he could provide 1 1/2 hours of phone support for $129!!!!!! I told him that he MUST be joking their product that I had purchased less than two years ago malfunctioned and you were going to charge ME AGAIN to fix it?!!! He told me that no he was not joking and he was SOOO serious! I asked for the corporate phone number and after being on hold for 5 minutes he finally gave it to me. hdd set, the need to enter password with upper case is not a requirement more and there are a lot more fixes too, enjoy and I hope this bit of info was useful:) It will be worth reading the read me file to see what has changed in this bios version, I can tell you that for those out there that have password issues i.e. Hold down keys fn+esc and power up the laptop, when the power led begins to blink release the two buttons and press the power button just once, observe the usb stick flashing indicating it's flashing the bios, please note this can take a few attempts, I once struggled for a few hours until I finally tamed the beast :) be patient okay, I would like to point out if you wish to update within winxp use the same bios update 3309, extract the zipped files to a formatted usb stick and rename the two files again but DO NOT REMOVE or interfere with the other files in the folder, with the laptop up and running open the folder and click on the Insysdeflash file only within the winflash file, this will flash your bios within windows and update it to the latest version, I read that flashing it when using the fn+esc keys merely restores the bios, I have tested this and mine updated to 3309 only when I flashed my bios within windows using the complete d/loaded bios update as mentioned. Insert the usb stick into the usb left hand side make sure the charger is plugged in. Rename the file FLASHIT to FLASHIT.EXE and the second file 3309.fd(bios file) to ZG5IA32.FD rename them precisely like that, please check your spelling is correct.

and d/load the bios update 3309, open the folder and copy two files to a formatted fat usb stick.

Boot acer aspire from usb