Whats wrong with this laptop?

[hearld500]

My parents bought my little sister a Acer Aspire 3100 laptop. It came with vista basic, but it was redicilously slow, so I put xp on it.
The first laptop we returned after two days because the screen would shut off, but the computer would still stay on. It would make somewhat of a grinding noise like a fan was catching or possiblely the hard drive. After restarting it, it would work for awhile and do the samething.

We returned it and got a replacement, but this one is doing the same thing minus the grinding sound.
What the hell could be the matter with these things?
Its deffinently not overheating, plent of air space, doesn't feel hot, and the fan doesn't kick up.
Any ideas?

[MKE]

Acer's are crap. i work on the geek squad, and Acer computer's are the most returned for being defective. it's ridiculous how many get returned, or how many we are supposed to set up, and when we open them new out of the box and they dont work.

I would personally have exchanged it for another brand.

[JellyWarrior]

We have 2 cheap Acer laptops here and they are possibly the worst 2 laptops I've seen. and used

The best thing that I can suggest to you is that you increase the ram inside them, because I'll bet that they have 256MB with at least 32MB going to the graphics card.

Get 1GB at the minimum.

Alternatively (and recommended), take it back and get something better (with 1GB of ram).

[hearld500]

Yeah, I think we're going to end up taking it back. Just irritating. Wish I could figure out whats wrong with this thing.

[MulletMan13]

At my work we always have Apple computers coming in for repairs and stuff... damn those computers must be worse than Acer, I haven't seen a single one of those at all.

[JellyWarrior]

We haven't had a problem with any of them here either, they're just obscenely slow.

[hearld500]

Well, my dad took back the second laptop and got a third acer.
The guy at the store told my dad that you couldn't put XP on the computer because there were hidden programs that wouldn't let you do that and there was driver issues. Bullshit. Acer has the XP drivers on the site.....and programs that won't let you do that? ha

So basically, we're going to leave vista on this incredably slow machine to see what happens.

[MKE]

hopefully this one will work for you.

And lol at the guy that said you can't do it. As long as the manufacture has drivers for XP, it can be done. I know we've ran into that a few times (i think some gateways, toshiba's, and sony's) but i do know HP's are pretty much gauranteed to have them, but have never done an Acer.

Just, if you are going to install XP on it, make sure you make Acer's recovery disc's (both of them, 1 dvd and 1 dvd/cd)

[Thomas]

Well, my dad took back the second laptop and got a third acer.
The guy at the store told my dad that you couldn't put XP on the computer because there were hidden programs that wouldn't let you do that and there was driver issues. Bullshit. Acer has the XP drivers on the site.....and programs that won't let you do that? ha

So basically, we're going to leave vista on this incredably slow machine to see what happens.

Hidden programs? If you formatted the drive before you put XP on I'd think it'd get rid of these "secret" programs. I'm suprised they took it back after you put XP on it, I would have though best buy would have bitched about you voiding some hidden warrenty agreement or something.

[MKE]

^^ By installing XP on any new notebook, you actually do void their warranty. But we have to take them back if there's obvious problems with the way it's running/in return policy.

[Disheveled DrFreeze]

hopefully this one will work for you.

And lol at the guy that said you can't do it. As long as the manufacture has drivers for XP, it can be done. I know we've ran into that a few times (i think some gateways, toshiba's, and sony's) but i do know HP's are pretty much gauranteed to have them, but have never done an Acer.

Just, if you are going to install XP on it, make sure you make Acer's recovery disc's (both of them, 1 dvd and 1 dvd/cd)

also check for a hidden partion at the beginning of the HD, most computer manufacturers just put the installed OS there in a ghost file or something, then load a recovery program (but not image) on a "recovery" cd/dvd

as for drivers, you dont even need acer drivers, just find out what kind of chipsets the mobo is using, and DL those drivers (probably some crappy sis or via thing)

[hearld500]

Yeah, they didn't care that we had XP on it. I didn't see any place to make the backup discs, there is a hidden recovery partition that I had left alone though.

It's running vista now...slowly. Is there anything short of more ram that can speed up vista considerably?

[Roofus]

At Circuit City, we charge $130 to convert a Vista PC to XP. It's usually a pain in the ass to find XP drivers and the only thing like a "secret program" is a BIOS setting on some of them that causes XP to blue screen during setup. Point is, it's entirely possible to do. In fact, we did two today.

[sixteen-bit]

It's running vista now...slowly. Is there anything short of more ram that can speed up vista considerably?

It's likely using an integrated GPU which besides stealing system RAM capacity also leeches off its bandwidth, so avoid any of Vista's fancy new GUI tricks like Aero.

Also, convert your file system(s) to NTFS if they're not already. It's pretty retarded but some laptops come configured for FAT32 which has caused me no end of trouble with windows hibernate and standby functions

Code: Select all

convert c: /FS:NTFS
convert d: /FS:NTFS
etc

[hearld500]

Thanks man, yeah, its in NTFS.
Well, we're on the third acer, left vista on and so far so good. So I'm not sure what to think.