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Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed?

tealsocks — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:47:12 -0800

Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed? I bought an 11.6" Aspire One at Staples about a month and a half ago, and the night before last it started making a clicking sound followed by a beep which I can only assume is coming from the hard drive. Sometimes this sound is followed by a blue screen of death and sometimes i can just pick the computer up and it goes away. Is this the sound of a hard drive failing? I carry my netbook around a lot, but it's always in a padded laptop bag so I'm pretty sure I haven't damaged it in any way. Do I need to get a replacement?

Which of these 11.6" PC laptops should I get?

ishotjr — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:20:29 -0800

Looking for an ideal 11.6" laptop/netbook for under $600. I have $600 to buy a laptop and I think I've narrowed it down to two (I think). They both run Windows 7 and seem comparable in other respects.

I plan to use this laptop for taking notes, writing papers and browsing the internet, as well as maybe occasionally streaming video like on Netflix or Hulu. I own an external optical drive already for DVDs. Thing is, I know nothing about video cards.
My current full-size laptop is still functional for watching movies and I don't play games other than Snood and the games that come on the computer (Solitaire and that sort of thing).

This Acer from a previous post seems pretty great, but I'm a little hung up on the price once I pay for expedited shipping.

I'm also considering this Toshiba model that has a dual-core processor (right?). For this one, I can buy it in person (from the dreaded Best Buy), which is a plus in that I need it ASAP.

I've read up on these on CNET and other user reviews. But if anyone has strong feelings either way on these, or can tell me if one is glaringly better for the price, I'd really appreciate it. Or, if you want to suggest a different 11.6" laptop (other than Dell), I am definitely open to other suggestions. The choices were somewhat overwhelming.

install Windows XP on Vista laptop

gigimakka — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:43:49 -0800

Trouble installing windows xp on a vista laptop (Acer 6530) I wiped my acer 6530 laptop hd, and upon attempting to install windows xp, it only recognizes 131 GB of the 250 GB hard drive.

Is this because I did not install the Win XP BIOS before I wiped the drive of Vista? (I have the XP bios on a flash drive, downloaded from the Acer site.) I did change the original Vista bios settings from AHCI to IDE, and boot order to DVD ROM drive first.

I'm considering 2 plans: 1) Install Win XP on the 131GB space I do have, and then install the Win XP BIOS, re-wipe the HD and re-install Win XP, or 2) Re-install Vista, replace those Vista BIOS with the XP BIOS, and then re-wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of Win XP. Which would you recommend?

Alternatives? Thanks...

Why won't my laptop charge?

Emera Gratia — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:13:13 -0800

My Aspire 3680 (crappy laptop PC) doesn't want to hold a charge anymore, with either battery. How do I determine if it's my laptop, my batteries, or my charger? (I have a VOM and know how to use it).

No reserved blocks in ext2 on Aspire One?

Busy Old Fool — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:32:42 -0800

Why is it OK to have no reserved blocks in ext2 on the Acer Aspire One? This guide to recovering space on the Acer Aspire One gives as one suggestion:
By default the ext2 filesystems reserves 5% of all blocks for the superuser. You can safely set this to 0% and gain additional 325MB, or 375MB if you also remove the swap partition.
sudo tune2fs -m0 /dev/sda1

Now, I think I understand what reserved blocks are and why. Basically, it's because to avoid a situation where the free disk space drops close to zero, root doesn't have room in /var to do even the most basic things and the whole system starts falling apart. Please correct me if that's wrong or incomplete.

So why is it OK to unreserve these blocks on the Aspire One? Is there something about the way Linpus is set up that makes the above scenario impossible?

What damage did tea spillage do to my laptop?

kitfreeman — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:25:26 -0800

I recently spilled green tea (no milk or sugar) around my Acer Aspire 5920 laptop. The machine now makes strange noises. What damage did I do? [more inside] The tea went into the upper left quarter of the machine (looking down from above), mainly through the ventilation holes. I drained the liquid, let it dry out, and the machine seems to work ok. However, it occasionally makes strange noises, especially on start up. It's a fizz-popping noise, in short bursts, a bit like static. It sounds as if it's coming from a loudspeaker. Does anyone know the machine well enough to diagnose the fault, and tell me please (a) if it's serious and (b) how to fix it?

I've found the service manual for this model here

Thanks!

Hotplugging an external monitor? - xubuntu/aspire one

knapah — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:00:15 -0800

How do I make my external monitor hot-pluggable in xubuntu installed on an Acer Aspire One? I recently got rid of Linpus on my netbook and have so far only had one complaint. My external monitor doesn't work terribly well with it.

If I have the external plugged into the VGA port throughout bootup I can use it to some extent, but when I try to change the resolution through the GUI (Apps>>Settings>>Settings Manager>>Display) it tends to crash xfce.

I've had some success using xrandr to get the external working more or less as I would like it, but then I can't get the laptop screen working again without unplugging the external and rebooting.

Can someone with better knowledge of linux and xubuntu help me out? The level of my knowledge is incredibly slim, so if in doubt, over-explanation is best.

Help with Linpus on the Aspire One One

loquax — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:01:37 -0800

So I bought an Acer Aspire One, a netbook/UMPC/whatever you want to call it, and it comes with Linpus and I know next to nothing about Linuxish stuff let alone this flavour, please help with some basic questions? Linpus (or at least the version installed on this thing) is very basic, it's designed for basic access to email, the internet, etc. I think it's built on Fedora 8 (or at least those are the applications that work on it). I figured out how to get access to the more advanced settings, and have installed VLC based on instructions from the internet, and found the package manager which has a bunch of stuff that I don't really understand. The key key thing that I want to accomplish is accessing my windows-based wireless network, which I have no idea how to do and can find no support for. Nothing pre-loaded on the machine seems to allow for this. Can I not create a shortcut to my server and carry on? Do I need to install something?

Before you suggest Ubuntu or another flavour, which is what I was thinking to do, the current distributions don't yet support this guy, so I want to hold off on installing that. Unless you know better...

Getting my email LED working with Outlook/GMail

d7415 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:07:50 -0800

I am trying to get the Email Indicator LED on my Acer Aspire laptop working with GMail and/or Outlook 2007. The easiest way seems to be with some sort of POP emulator/pass-through. Other than accessing the LED directly (there seems to be some work on this in linux - http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/), the laptop came with "Launch Manager" software, which will check a pop server every x seconds, and flash the LED if and when there is a new email waiting.

My problems with this are:
1) Most importantly, the program is limited to POP3 access, without any SSL/TLS support, and without the ability to change the port number.

2) It can only check one pop account (I have 2, plus an IMAP and GMail, the last 2 being the important ones)

3) When outlook fetches the mail, which it does every two minutes, the light will clear. If I set outlook to leave messages on the server, the light will remain on after I have read them.

So, I need this program to access something, looking like a regular POP server, which can tell it there are new messages if there are unread messages, and that there are not if there are not. I assume the easiest way would be to use GMail as the "master" account, but I am not sure.

At my disposal, I have:
- a laptop, running Vista Business and Outlook 2007 and is effectively always on
- a (well, 2) linux-based, always-on server, with Sendmail installed and configured and no GUI installed.

I can't seem to find any "fake" POP servers, let alone anything that will provide the pass-through needed.

Thanks for reading, and for any help!

Acer Crystal Eye goes blind

divabat — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:32:36 -0800

What is going on with my Acer Crystal Eye webcam? It suddenly died and won't revive again. I have an Acer TravelMate 6291 laptop that's only a few months old, running Windows Vista (Home, 32-bit). It has an in-built Crystal Eye webcam and accompanying software, which I used regularly.

About a week ago I was using Skype when the webcam suddenly died. Yesterday I tried using it again, and I got a Camera Not Found error. After Googling and looking up Acer's help for answers (most of which applied to other laptops and were in other languages), I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers many, many times. I even tried the trick of emptying my Pictures folder.

Once in that whole mess did the webcam work again. But only once. Now, even though I have the correct drivers installed and it shows up on Device Manager, when I try to load the webcam app I get the following error messages:

HR: 80040217

followed by

Camera is busy!

And then the program shuts down.

What am I missing? Is my webcam forever buggered? I've tried updating the drivers (Suyin) via Windows but it says it's up to date.

Should I trade my PC Laptop for a Macbook?

monkeyagent — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:32:21 -0800

I was talking with a friend who owns a Macbook. She was talking about how she doesn't really use it for much and is looking for something newer. I mentioned that I just got my laptop but that I didn't like Vista and have been interested in Macs. Long story short, we came to the conclusion that we might each like to trade out laptops. I'm wondering if this sounds like a fair trade: My computer:
Acer Aspire 5050
AMD Turion 64 Processor MK-38 (2.2GHz, 512KB L2)
14.1" LCD
80GB HDD
DVD Burner
1 GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 Integrated graphics (variable GRAM depending on how much of it you assign from system general system RAM)
Has Vista Home Basic
It has internal wifi and is in more or less perfect condition.

Her computer:
Macbook
Intel Core Duo 1.8 Ghz processor [L2 Cache (per processor): 2MB]
LCD slightly smaller, though I don't mind that
34.22 GB HDD (? I couldn't figure out how to determine the full capacity - this amount reflects how much is "free")
DVD (i assume) burner? (not important, as I use my desktop for such tasks)
512 MB 667Mhz DDR2 SDRAM
OSX Version: 10.4.10
Also, while the case is scuffed up a bit on the outside, it seems to work fine and would clean up well. The speakers don't work, but the headphone jack work fine.

My only needs for my laptop are Internet accessibility, word processing, and basic multimedia playing functions. Everything else I do on my self-built PC. I know very little about Macs, but have been wanting to learn about them. Does this trade make sense? Are there any other things I should consider?

Decide what laptop is best for me!

tomcosgrave — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:29:33 -0800

I am seriously considering getting a laptop. Basic requirements are that it have a 15-inch screen, 2GBs of RAM and Windows Vista Home Premium. I've done a fair bit of research, but am finding it hard to come to a final decision. So now I turn to you, wise MeFi'ites. Can you help? For various reasons, Apple machines aren't an option. I've decided to take the Vista plunge as it has some nice photo editing options I'd like - I'm a current XP user and I want to move on from it. Budget is under €1500.

I am extremely tempted by either the VGN-N31Z/W or the more expensive, slightly less pretty, but better featured VGN-FZ11L. Can anyone give me their thoughts on these two models?

Also, has anyone got any non Sony suggestions?

Acer are my second choice of machine...but I've not been able to play with the ones I'm interested in, only read about them online. I have played with a large 20-inch screen Acer, which was lovely, but are far too large for my liking and beyond my budget. What are the smaller ones like?

I'm not that interested in Dell, I have used some of their newer machines and I'm not all that impressed - they feel sort of clunky when I sit down and use them. The one XPS model I do like has a smaller screen than I want.

Help me make my mind up!

Dismayed By My Display

General Zubon — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:33:21 -0800

My Acer AL1912 monitors have been acting strangely ... the bottom quarter of the display is stretched and distorted. Does anyone have any idea what's causing this? Naturally, there are some odd circumstances and thus there is ... I posted this on a couple of Acer-related help boards but no joy as of yet.

This problem seems to occur when the monitor is accidentally left on for a length of time (5 days or more, and please note only the monitor is left on for this period). The bottom quarter of the screen becomes distorted and extremely stretched downwards, making it impossible to use anything in that space (thus making it impossible to use the display, really).

I have a two monitor set-up. This had occurred on one of the monitors in the past a couple times after accidentally leaving it on as above. I switched monitors and did enough tests to believe that the problem indeed originated from the Acer and not my computer, cables, or video card (but of course, I could be wrong). As mysteriously as the problem occurs, a solution in the past was to leave the monitor off for a week or more (I travel a lot so this is feasible). Most of the time after it's been off for a couple weeks the monitor displays normally. The last time this happened I just made sure that I switched the monitor off so there was no future problem ... until now.

Recently I was out of town for a month and a colleague used my computer set-up. You guessed it: he left both monitors on after switching off the computer and they were on for over a week. Now, upon returning, both monitors are distorted and stretched in the bottom corner. Leaving them off for an extended time is now not an option as I have a project due in a couple weeks. And with both monitors afflicted I can't just use a 'good' one. Help!

If it makes any difference, I'm running these off a Macintosh G4 in a dual monitor set-up. As I work in music production, there are medium-sized studio speakers about 5 inches away from each monitor.

The warranty is expired on these. If you feel they are broken and think you know why then I'd love some suggestions on the easiest/quickest/cheapest way to fix the problem.

Many 'love-you-forever' points go to anyone who can help. Thanks in advance.

How to find my laptop's second RAM slot

zembla3 — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:55:28 -0800

Why can't I find the second RAM slot in my laptop? Photo 1

Photo 2

I have an Acer Travelmate 804Lci, which I bought a couple of years ago. According to the computer's specs (scroll down), it has two 256 MB RAM sticks and can accomodate a total of 2 GB of RAM. But when I tried to install two 1 GB sticks of RAM (I've never installed RAM before), I only saw one RAM stick. Where's the other slot? See photos above (sorry, not great quality.)

Ever heard of the Acer TM4674WLMi laptop?

badlydubbedboy — Tue, 09 May 2006 08:51:10 -0800

Ever heard of the Acer TM4674WLMi laptop? I've seen the Acer TM4674WLMi laptop on sale at various places (including J&R for $1600). This seems like a darn good deal for a 2 Ghz Intel Core Duo laptop with 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HD, X1400 Radeon etc. -- but try as I might, my Google-fu is weak and I cannot find a single review of it anywhere online.

Has anyone here had experience with Acer laptops or this model specifically?

Airport Extreme Acer Problem

priorpark17 — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:01:58 -0800

Airport Extreme can't connect with Acer can connect with compaq. I can't get an acer laptop (Aspire 1640) to hold a wireless connection with a Airport Extreme wireless network. My old compaq connects fine, my HP PDA connects fine, the powerbook fine. BUT the acer connects fine to any other wireless network I can find. Even more irritating occasionally the acer will connect to the Airport Extreme but will be a very slow connection and will fail after a couple of mins. The airport extreme is connected to some kinda generic modem/router called Xtreme.

I need some pointers.

bad screen! bad!

luriete — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 11:21:11 -0800

My mother has an Acer LCD (model AL1715) hooked up to her Mac Mini. The warranty expired 3 days ago, and last night it woke up after being asleep for about 45 minutes with a black line across it - the image divided in such a way that the image has rolled - that is, the bottom is at the top and the top at the bottom, split not quite equal halves. Disconnecting and reconnecting don't work, powering off and back on don't work, changing the display mode on the mac doesn't work, and we can't find a reset button. Acer doesn't answer tech support phone calls (endless holds) or emails. Any ideas?

Replacing laptop speakers

punishinglemur — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 22:29:32 -0800

My laptop speakers are terrible. Can I replace them? It's an Acer TravelMate 4400.