Saturday, August 12, 2023

Acer Aspire One D255

I recently attempted to revive my old Acer Aspire One D255.
I fitted it with an affordable SSD, upgraded the RAM from 1 to 2 GB, and set out to get it up and running.

I. Operating system

  • Lubuntu 23.04 installation failed twice, each time with a different error.
  • Windows 10 gets installed, and would really be ideal due to ongoing support, but it is far too slow on this machine (even on the LTSC version the Start menu takes a few seconds to show up).
  • Windows 7 64 bit got installed, but I couldn't find a video driver.
  • Windows 7 32 bit works fine; I went with the Home Basic edition.
Note: the CPU (Intel Atom N455) is 64bit, but the system is designed to run a 32bit OS.

II. Drivers

The Acer website no longer lists the product, and the old product page link has been deleted.
The Wayback Machine doesn't have a copy.
https://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers/2987;-;AOD255

However, their "global-download.acer.com" server still hosts all the driver files.
An anonymous benefactor links to them on a dedicated blog:
http://getacerdriver.blogspot.com/2015/04/acer-aspire-one-d255d255e-drivers.html

III. Software

Finding working software for Windows 7 is surprisingly challenging.

Google Chrome 109.0.5414.120 is the last version that runs on Windows 7.
I went for a PortableApps.com package which I got from SourceForge.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Google%20Chrome%20Portable/GoogleChromePortable_109.0.5414.120_online.paf.exe/download

IV. Troubleshooting

Immediately after installing Windows 7, I was hit with the Windows Update Error 80072EFE.
Luckily, there was an easy fix available on the Microsoft Support Community, namely downloading and installing Windows Update Client for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: March 2016. Windows Update worked after this, and I was offered to install hundreds of update packages.



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