Acer laptops most annoying in the World?

**kleefarr** · April 1st, 2011, 06:54 AM

YES they farking are!!!

Now I have that off my chest...

Aspire 3004LC LXA5505
Originally ran Windows XP Home. Hard drive failed. Replaced and installed Win 2K Pro. No problems.

Bought a New Windows XP Home OS a few days ago and have been trying to install it and get it working since.

Have altered BIOS to disable the D2D recovery. Windows XP Home installs but then hangs when opening.
HDD has been formatted and wiped.
All Windows XP 'bling' settings have been removed in safe mode and still no change.

I have never known a laptop like it.
What next?

**Guts3d** · April 1st, 2011, 08:35 AM

I have to humbly disagree, I have had E-machine laptops that made me say four letter words of impropriety. Gosh!

Are there any USB drives attached? I have had them interfere, even though they aren't in the boot sequence.

**CeeBee** · April 1st, 2011, 09:46 AM

Considering it came with XP and ran (properly?) it until the drive died, it's not the laptop that is to blame.
More likely PEBKAC.

**Ferrit** · April 1st, 2011, 10:30 AM

I would agree its definitely user error not the laptop.
Why would you need to buy a new XP when you had a license already there on the laptop?

**kleefarr** · April 1st, 2011, 11:51 AM

Ok guys, maybe I was being a bit over dramatic.

With regard to the new XP copy, as the old hard drive had fried and was not recoverable, the options were get a new installation CD from Acer for €56 or source a cheaper copy myself, albeit only €10 cheaper, but hey, I didn't think I would have these problems.

Have reinstalled XP on 2 other machines no problem the last couple of days and in the past have not had this much trouble with any computer/laptop in regard to installing an OS. (Which exception to an old copy of Win 95 which was required by a vet to run his old accounts program, but that's another story.)

Have managed to progress through Activation and also Upgrades for XP, but still with the lock ups.

Trawling the net seems to indicate that others have had the same problem but with different versions of the Aspire. Could be something to do with Shadow Bios?? I'm not sure. New one on me.

**Ferrit** · April 2nd, 2011, 09:15 AM

Pretty much a regular disk of XP Home would work. You would need to go get the drivers from Acer. That is quite straight forward

**kleefarr** · April 4th, 2011, 03:11 AM

Originally Posted by Ferrit

Pretty much a regular disk of XP Home would work. You would need to go get the drivers from Acer. That is quite straight forward

Yes Ferrit, as it would appear, it should be straight forward. I had already done the XP Home install and have the drivers from Acer, some of which have been installed, but all the time this is freezing and locking up.

Runs Ubuntu 10 no problem, but then it would. Am tempted to reinstall Win 2K Pro and see if there are any problems.

HDD scans and RAM tests are all ok.

**slgrieb** · April 4th, 2011, 09:43 AM

I think the mobo is bad. I realize this is going to be a stretch, but I've been there myself. A couple of years ago, I replaced a computer(for a corporate client) that kept crashing for no obvious reason. It passed all the diagnostics I ran just fine, and didn't even report an error with the POST card I installed.

I swapped out the power supply, RAM, CPU, and HSF, and it still crashed at random intervals. The customer replaced the computer and I inherited the old machine as salvage. Since all the replacements I had done had been useless, I restored the hardware to it's original state (yes, that would be PSU, RAM, etc.) and one night when I was really bored and really drunk, I tossed it up on the bench and tried to install Ubuntu 8 on the computer. It installed and ran just fine. I played with it for a couple of months, and it ran without a hitch.

In fact, I got so confident about this old dog that I decided to install Windows XP again and use it as a spare home computer. And every time I tried to install XP, the installation crashed. So, I repeated the previous cycle of replacements, and it didn't get any better. At the break of day, the mobo was the only bit of hardware that hadn't been changed. And because I may be just a bit OCD, I re-installed Ubuntu, which once again ran fine. In fact, this machine has been my Linux testbed for every Ubuntu release since then. And the alternate components have since been used in other projects without a glitch or hiccup.

**kleefarr** · April 5th, 2011, 03:32 AM

Major development!!

I now have a fully working updated Windows XP Home Acer Aspire 3000.
How??

Booted with the battery pack removed. So battery pack in while booting and hangs, no battery pack and it's fine. The battery pack is not great but works fine. New one on me.

But after booting and replacing the battery pack all runs sweetly as well.

Still have to take the battery pack out to boot up though.

Slgrieb, did you always try to install those OS on your Acer with the battery pack in?