updaating Iconia A500 tablet

Friends, I have been trying to upgrade my Iconia A500 tablet, recently bought it cheap, unused in the box from a University surplus sale. It is running Android 3.01 and is Build No. Acer_1.145.09_COM_GEN1. It steadfastly refuses to run navigation software said to be compatible with Android, even late versions of 2 and another with 3. It also won't upgrade to 3.2 with the _COM_GEN1 upgrade. Have seen a lot of that little robot with the exclamation point. Tried two different SD (2gig and 8gig) cards and quick reformatted them both to FAT32 just in case. I suspect that I am just out of luck because of the early date of the build. I will raise the failure to run the apps in another post. Any ideas, am open to suggestions. Thanks - Marc

Accepted answers

MEDM

Hurrah, updaed teh A500. What I had missed was that one had to unzip the site file onto the SD card then load that into the machine. When I did that, it loaded the opeaating system and actually updated directly from 3.01 to 4.0! without an intermediate! The file I had in my computer was the 4.0 update, I had forgotten it wsn't 3.2. My Nav progaqms seem to be running without Force closes! Thanks for the help.

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billsey

Hey Marc, IIRC you have to upgrade first to 3.2 before you can do the 4.0 upgrade. They actually use a bit different version number for the upgrade files. If I were a guessing man, I'd guess you have Acer_A500_7.014.01_COM_GEN1.

MEDM

Billsey, thanks for the reply. "Acer_A500_7.014.01_COM_GEN1", is that the build number or does the upgrade only work on models of that number or above. The build number listed in my machine is A500_1.145.09_COM_GEN1. I figured that I would have to go to 3.2 but was unable to accomplish that. The zip file was on the SD cards I used and the machine appeared to start unpacking them but then went to exclamation point? Don't know, maybe it is not ocverd by the update?

IronFly

i suspect the tablet if out of official updates, since the original build version is too old and can't be update using the available downloads.

i can only suggest to ask help to XDA community, they have an Acer A500 section.

MEDM

Hurrah, updaed teh A500. What I had missed was that one had to unzip the site file onto the SD card then load that into the machine. When I did that, it loaded the opeaating system and actually updated directly from 3.01 to 4.0! without an intermediate! The file I had in my computer was the 4.0 update, I had forgotten it wsn't 3.2. My Nav progaqms seem to be running without Force closes! Thanks for the help.

berrie

Hello,

I also have the Acer a500 with 3.2.1 Honeycomb.

I have been trying to update with no success.
Can you please tell me how you downloaded the update and installed from sd card?

I have reset my tab to fac settings and have never updated it.

I did go to the Acer site and download the Ice Cream sandwich for the Acer tab directly into the tablet. When i unzipped the files there were over 100 files listed. I looked for an exe file but couldnt find one. Am i supposed to click one of the files to install? Im confused.

Thank you in advance

MEDM

berrie, here is what I did. Took me a while to get through the confusing instructions in various places.

Download the update file from the website to a directory in your pc-DO NOT UNZIP IT INTO THE PC.

Insert your EMPTY micro SD card into the reader for your pc. The destination should be the Root directory of the SD card, using an empty card gaurantees that. Note, someone wrote it should be 2 gigs or bigger, someone else suggested 4 gigs. I had an 8 handy. It needs to be formatted in FAT 32 but I think that is standard.

Unzip the file using the SD card as the Destination.

Insert the SD card into the A500 and, while you hold down the volume down side of the volume button, hold down the power button.

When the tablet boots release the power button but keep the vol button down until the text appears. Then release it. According to ssome folks a menu might appear but mine went on and updated without any further action that I can remember.

Hope that this helps.

MEDM

berrie

Tinkerer,

Thank you so much for your detailed instructions, I havent had time to do it yet but hopefully i will give a try today.

I'll post how it went when im done.

Thanks again,

billsey

On some models the zip file you download contains either only a file named 'update.zip' or that and a readme file. In those cases you are supposed to extract the original zip and put the update.zip file in the root of the SD card. On others the download is the update.zip, but renamed to match the version. In that case you either put the downloaded file in the root of the SD or rename it first to update.zip and then place it on the card. There doesn't seem to be any easy way to tell which it's going to be short of downloading and looking.

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