This afternoon my Acer Aspire 5600's 100GB ATA/IDE drive died on me (lots of clicking/grinding sounds, nonstop disk read errors). I was looking around for a replacement but all I can find in stores are SATA drives. Can I find a reliable IDE drive somewhere for cheap? Would it be worth putting in a solid state drive (if one can be found for $100 or less)?
View 10 RepliesI am going to be doing a fresh install of XP on this machine.
I have downloaded all the drivers for the laptop that I think I need. I only have two questions:
1) The VGA_ATI.zip file, that will install the Catalyst Control Center and everything, right?
2) How do I install the LAN driver? I have the LanRTL.zip file downloaded, however in the folder there is no Setup.exe file. Just 3 .sys data files and a system info file. No executables at all.
Before I go ahead and do the format tomorrow morning, I'd like to get these questions answered. My internet on this computer is connected through Ethernet, so I kinda need to make sure the LAN is working.
Here is the rest of the files I have downloaded, am I missing anything?
. 802ABG
. ATI
. Audio
. CardRdr
. CCD
. Chipset
. ePM (the only one of the Empowerment Technology apps I may install)
. LanRTL
. Touchpad
I was given a broken 5600 - if I could fix it, it was mine. I fixed the electrical fault, but also foolishly deleted the hidden partition 1, which apparently held the restore image. The donor doesn't have the recovery CD, and I now need to do a full recovery. The drivers on the Acer site don't quite do the trick, and there's nothing I can find on the site to buy a new recovery disk.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI'm looking at the motherboard on my Aspire 5601AWLMi (mobo id "31zb2mb0091" ) and I see there's four places where can insert cards. Two are the RAM chips, those are labeled DDR RVS 1.8V with "tyco" written on the other side of the plastic bracket, there's wireless card slot not really labeled with anything conclusive over near the Lan and Phone port, and then there's another slot labeled "0624n3" on the left side of the plastic bracket and "-+AMP" on the other side of it. I have absolutely NO idea what that last slot is for, and I'd like to know, if anyone can figure it out.
To describe it, pin wise starting from the left it has 1 pin, a divider, then 61 pins in a row. I think it's 61. I'm not willing to recount :P
It's physically shorter than a ram chip, but not by much more than 3/4cm is my guess.
You can see the slot itself in this picture:
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The slot is sitting just above that big red..knob..thing.
Also, I found this page, but it didn't tell me anything useful, I think. The mobo is flipped over in the diagrams..
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My laptop is aspire 5601AWLMi. Just opened to upgrade the memory and came across this slot. Its 60mm wide or around 2.5'' length and is slightly smaller than the memory slot.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI had left the Acer plugged into the power socket in the wall. There was a power problem in our building and the electricity went and came back about 4-5 times over a span of 30 mins. This has happened before so I paid no attention to it. However, after the electricity supply stabilized, I casually looked to see that the charging lights on the Acer was not on. I unplugged the machine from the wall and tried to start it up - nothing happened. I took out the battery waited for a few minutes, put it back in and tried to start it up - again, nothing happened. I took out the battery and plugged the machine into the power socket in the wall and tried to start it up - again, nothing happened. As it stands, the Acer is dead.
The specs are T6660 (I am not quite sure about this but its something close), 2GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, Vista Home, integrated graphics (X3100).
One other point. You know the power brick from Acer has a green light on it which comes on when you have it plugged into the power socket on the wall. When I attached the power chord to the machine, the green light becomes dim and flickers. However, when I disconnect it from the machine, but keep it plugged into the power source on the wall, the light is on as it should be.
My Acer Aspire 5920G appears to have 'died' and I thought I'd try here before contacting Acer. Despite being under warranty, Acer have found loopholes to charge exorbitant fees every time something goes wrong.
the 2.5 year-old laptop was working perfectly last night. This morning, I opened it and:
T: Pressed power button
T+2secs: DVD drive clicks on, hard drive spins up, everything seems normal
T+5secs: NumLock light flashes, but visible POST/BIOS *does not appear*. The screen never shows anything.
T+8secs: Hard drive is still on but ceases activity. Operating system is not loaded.
(I took the timings at a subsequent attempt, but every attempt follows the same pattern)
I've tried:
- running from battery, AC and both
- reseating the memory modules
- replacing and removing the hard drive
- booting with a boot disk in the DVD drive
- booting with an external monitor attached
to no avail. From this end, I'm not sure what else I could try. Clearly there's no 'good' time for a laptop failure, but this is a pretty terrible time, so I was hoping to avoid Acer spending 6 weeks deciding how many hundreds to charge me.
Right down to the matter at hand. Yesterday I was working on my laptop, plugged in, but charging, about 40%, when all of a sudden it shuts down. I wasnt doing anything overly stressful, CPU's were each at about 50% load tops (Ubuntu 8.10, mysql, apache2, rythmbox, firefox, opera, some file browsers, pidgin).
My initial thought was that the power supply adapter had gone - thus it was draining whilst i worked and i hadnt noticed (since the connector is a little worn). I noticed that the little green light was blinking rapidly on it. However when I unplugged it from the laptop, it returned to its static green state.
I went to remove the HDD today as i had to get my work from it, so I thought I would try to start it up anyway. Nothing. Whilst removing the HDD i noticed an occasional clicking (3 little consecutive clicks to be precise, as if it were trying to start but just couldnt. This happened a few times, until I removed the battery, then it stopped. I can replicate this by turning it on and it will keep happening until I remove the battery.
Also I have gone inside, attempted to clean any dust off and cleaned the battery contacts, so it is unlikely to be anything like that.
I know its an old laptop these days and sometimes these things die, but this thing has been my baby. I learnt to code on this thing, I learnt Linux on this thing and I'm not giving it up without a fight.
Over the last few days I've read countless posts abt the same problem as I've been having with my Acer Aspire 5920G. It all started a week ago. I had shut down my laptop the night b4 and in the morning as usual I pressed the power button to start it up, it started up, completed POST and then powered on with a blank/switched off LCD screen and I could hear it going all the way up to the Vista log-on screen...... all this time with a blank screen that had no power. I kept it for a few minutes and then switched it off.
When i tried to restart,........the laptop powers on, the Bluetooth light comes on and the Hard drive led flickers a couple of times and then it'll just sit there unable to load the BIOS! Naturally I thought something was wrong with the BIOS for it to not start or complete POST. But I had absolutely no idea where the BIOS battery was located, so I couldn't do very much abt it (now I've some idea where it is, after a week of tinkering with the motherboard.)
But just to be on the safe side, over the last week I checked the RAM (which was OK), took out and reseated my GPU board (seemed OK, the GPU could have been the culprit coz of the blank screen), removed the Heat Sink (which was covering the CPU and which also acted as a Heat Sink for the GPU) and checked the CPU. The thermal paste that was covering the CPU had melted all around it, so I replaced it with new thermal paste after I cleaned it. Then I disconnected and reconnected the Heat Sink Fan and put it all back together. It didn't restart! The same symptoms as b4 appeared again. But this time after a few secs, it went into an infinite loop of powering on and restarting every 5 or so seconds.
So I thought, I'll give it one last go b4 chucking it for a new laptop! Since the first symptom of the whole problem when this all started was a LCD screen that wasn't working...... I removed all the coverings of the screen and detached and reconnected the two LCD inverter cables connected to the inverter boards thats located just below the screen and then after removing the back covering of the LCD screen, I detached and reconnected the LCD cable just behind the screen. The attachment of this cable is very fragile and flimsy. I've a feeling that this is what caused all the problems. It did seem loose!........
my housemate is having problems with his Acer Aspire 5600.
Basically pretty much 2 out of 3 times you turn it on it will load in to windows and then just freeze. No touchpad input, no keyboard input, you cant use the power button either, you have to take the battery out to stop it.
I tried a USB mouse, no input from that either.
I formatted the whole machine and reinstalled everything, incase it was some sort of malware, still no joy.
One solution I read was to make sure all the battery settings were set to Never, as it can sometimes be known to put itself to sleep at stupid times... would make some sense for the symptoms, but I've done that and still no joy.
The machine runs fine EVERY time if you run it in Safe Mode... which doubly confuses me...
Another solution I have read is to switch the unit down to Word Processing Power on the acer control panel.
I havent actually installed the acer control panel, since I dont really like having third party software like that on there... but I should probably give it a go. Still, does it really HAVE to work on Word Processing power? That would be.... lame...
The notebook is running Windows XP Business 32-bit.
I have a monitor backlight failure on my Acer 5601WLMI / 5600 series. How do I find a replacement backlight? Are there any instructions on how I would be able to replace it?
I'm a laptop newb, and I've already tried to do a search on this forum and I haven't found any threads for this specific Acer monitor,
MyHard Drive for Inspiron 6400 died! I am photographer and need to get this running as soon as possible.
It came with a 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive.
Trying to replace it with a bigger HD.
Not sure what to get.
Would the 7200 rpm be better.
Would the Seagate ST9160411AS Momentus 7200.3 SATA 3Gb/s 160 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Driven work? ...
Ever since I saw newer systems being offered with Dual SSD drives in RAID for 128GB of SSD storage I've been wondering if I can do that with my XPS m1710.
My 100GB drive is just too small. I've been looking at replacing it with the Hitachi 200GB 7200 RPM drive, but I thought I'd look at the SSD option as well.
I just had a blue screen of death (dump screen) for the third time in 2 months and after reboot, i get this screen:
What can i do now? I would like to recover the files i have in the HDD, as i know if i send this to Acer, they'll wipe out everything or replace a new HDD. Can i open the laptop and try to plug the HDD to some enclosure to get the files out?
Will that void the warranty?
In the BIOS, i see:
HDD Model Name: None
HDD Serial Number:
ATAPI Model Name: None
i had my acer far a lil after a year and it died on me. i know it over heats like a fresh baked cinnamon roll in your hands. i added heat sinks to the chips helped a lil. anyway. laptop was running fine. played cod2,tf2 etc. i left it on playing music and all of a sudden, died. it just turned off. tried the power button and bought a new charger. still no go. i plug the ac adapter in without battery, nothing. when i plug it in i c the ac adapter blink. laptop shows no sign of life, none of the leds light up. i tore down the laptop for further inspection. cpu looks fine, memory looks fine, hard drive still works on my desktop.
View 10 Replies View RelatedI bought an Acer 5672 WLMI a little over 2 years ago. I thought the Acer offered good value for the money. The specs were Intel Core Duo processor T2300, 2GB RAm, X1400 ATI Video card, 120gb HDD, 15.4" screen, winXp Pro -cost of the system was $1800 + tax (Canadian dollars).
The 5672 always ran hot. It was almost hard to keep it on my lap it sometimes got so hot. I was not even gaming. I was just doing standard web browsing/word processing. The bottom of the latop got so hot that is basically disintegrated most of the Microsoft WinXP Certification sticker. I pulled the bottom cover off and there was nothing obstructing the CPU Fan. I also would intermittently get a green/blue? line about 3-4 inches wide down the middle of the screen. This green/blue line was intermittent. Generally, the screen problem and the heat problem became worse as the 5672 became older.
After 15 months the hard drive failed. I put in a new 160gb HDD. Acer never gave me the original winXP CD and the Win XP Certification Sticker had burned itself off. I reinstalled another copy of winXP Pro that I had. The laptop ran ok for a bit, but then the wireless starting acting up...I would get dropped wireless connections and sometimes it could not detect wireless signals that I knew were there. I stopped using the wireless completely.
After about 18 months the CPU fan started to make an intermittent noise. At approx 2 years, the CPU fan failed completely. I thought I could replace the CPU fan, but realized the CPU was an intergrated unit with cooling tubes and cooled the CPU chip in addition to some other chips on the motherboard. I checked the Acer web site and did not see this part listed (not many parts were listed). I checked on ebay saw a few posting for a new fan/cooling unit -cost was approx $170. I debated whether or not I wanted to spend $200 and time fixing a 2 year laptop...that always ran hot and had some potential screen issues.
For a few days I ran the latop with no CPU fan and used an external fan to try and keep everything cool. I had motherboard monitor and could see this was not working and temps were getting high. I was debating what to do, when the laptop just died. The screen displayed a bunch of funky colours and then it just died. I was able to power it up again, but a few minutes later it did the same thing (funky colours on the display and shutdown by itself). I tried rebooting and nothing..it was dead. I pulled the hard drive and checked that it was ok...............
Ma lappy will be 2 years old in august, but it seems battery alredy died.
I do carry it around quite a lot, but most of the time I work on AC power.
Few weeks ago I had to work on battery and to my surprise laptop went into hibernation in less than 5 minutes after power on. Filled back to 100% and tested -- battey indicator counted percents down to 0 literally inf front of my eyes.
Is there a way to determine battery status? Might be some cells that are damaged? Any Idea what might gone wrong?
Laptop has 2 year warranty, so it's still covered for few months, but I doubt that is also true for battery only.
any know sources of card that will work model i got one that has died nvidia card
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is this redaon every one has been useing?
The power light above the machine indicates that it is off, no sound etc. the ac adapter still runs on another machine. machine has 3 years static use.
is it an obvious mainboard failure?
can i safely buy a new mainboard?
Is it worth fixing seeing as the GFX is Nvidia 8600m and may fail anytime (although it never plays 3d games so surely should last 3 times longer than a heated one???).
should i sell the ram, graphics, processor, and laptop for spares and buy a different one to be cost effective?
What steps should i take to figure it out, fix it, else to find my sister an new one?
Dell announced, a few weeks ago, a new replacement for the 57XX and 55XX Mobile Broadband MiniPCIe cards that they are installing as integrated WWAN in select notebooks.
The new Dell Wireless 5600 Mobile Broadband card is based on the Qualcomm Gobi chipset, and therefore supports all major NA carriers (CDMA and GSM/HSPA), and all global UMTS/HSPA bands.
As a result, you can theoretically use this one integrated device on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, O2, Telus, Rogers, Fido, T-Mobile, or any other EVDO or HSPA service globally, just by activating with the provider (CDMA/EVDO) or using the providers SIM card (GSM/HSPA).
The SSD drive would be big enough for my needs but I'm hearing they are real slow. My experience with other SS storage devices would seem to confirm this. Any experience out there with speed issues on these solid state hard drives?
View 9 Replies View RelatedJust got an acer aspire 15 for birthday. The box says dvd/cd combo, but there is no dvd cd drive. There is a plastic piece over where it would go. Can I add one and how much for and internal one?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a problem with my laptop, is an acer aspire 5672wmli, the model with 1gb of ram.
The drive is a Matsushita UJ-845-S, when it was new it had a firmware version 1.00 and they gave me some incompatible problems with some media, so i decided to flash with a newer version, 1.02 and after that the drive work well but I was unable to did the boot from cd.
The firmware page is this:
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The firmware 1.02 is for toshiba OEM and this is why it give me this problem.
So now wath I can do, I send an email to acer-support but they want only that i send to acer but i must pay because is my fault .
My question is, I see some internal dvd drivers for notebook to buy, so I can buy one and replace with my?.
All internal drives can work fine if I replace or i must see some technical caractheristics?
In the specs listed on the website, and on the sticker on the laptop itself:
320 GB Dual HDD
(160 GBx2)
I am going insane, on the device manager it says I have two HDs, but I think one of them has been partitioned, the one with the windows data on (C drive) the HDs in my computer are displayed as this:
I've been told of a program call 'Raid' or something, but I'm really not sure what it actually does.
I just want to know if the two smaller HDs are partitioned and if possible, how to join them up again,
I have purchased a DVD Writer to replace the DVD-ROM the laptop came with. With some of my old laptops, these drives were held by one screw or a spring loaded lock, but this does not seem to be the case with the Acer.
which screws in which order need to be taken out to replace the drive?
my Acer Aspire 3680.
My laptop will not accept any dvd+r's in the E drive. Therefore I cannot burn dvd's nor back up.
I also have no sound. I have tried every option available on this laptop!
how can i open the cd drive on my acer aspire e15??? when i open the cd drive (D then says it came to a problem what must i do???
View 2 Replies View RelatedI picked up a 4730Z last week, and it has a 120GB HDD in it. I need a little more room, and am looking to add the full 4GB's of ram.
My question is which hard drive to get for this model. I'm not sure if I can use a 3.0 GB/s SATA or not or if I should get a 1.5 GB/s. I want at least a 320GB drive, but can't find any that specifically say there's a jumper option for 3.0/1.5. Search function yielded me no results either for the 4730Z specs.
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Caution to all Aspire One users?
I am considering upgrading my original HD in my Aspire 5672.
what drive I should consider?
I would like at least 200GB to make it worthwhile to do.
Great if I could increase performance as well.