Strawberryland Forum

Backtracking on the Acer staying with Vista Basic. Rather, I will see if it runs fine after a full system restore. If it's still painfully slow, I plan on installing PCLinuxOS on it.

Hungry.

Here is the Acer, in the middle of system restoration.


And, here are the specs. And it is indeed a low end laptop with a single core Celeron 585. If Vista Basic doesn't work out, then Linux shall be installed.

However, there is one odd issue with the laptop. It seems at random points, the entire laptop shuts down without warning with a loud click. I'm not sure if there is dust in the CPU heatsink or if it's a hardware issue. I plan on opening up the access panel later to reseat the RAM just in case.

cpd2009 Wrote:Busy setting up a recently acquired laptop. I wanted a laptop solely for music playback, and I finally found a good used laptop that will fit the bill. Said laptop will also be a backup just in case Greta ever has to go out of service one day.

Neat images of it. How did you end up with this, if that's not too nosy to ask.

Glad you guys are still kicking around. I guess I knew that though. Hehe.

Angel Wrote:

cpd2009 Wrote:Busy setting up a recently acquired laptop. I wanted a laptop solely for music playback, and I finally found a good used laptop that will fit the bill. Said laptop will also be a backup just in case Greta ever has to go out of service one day.

Neat images of it. How did you end up with this, if that's not too nosy to ask.

Glad you guys are still kicking around. I guess I knew that though. Hehe.

It was on sale at the local PC store. They normally sell new laptops, but they had this used Acer for less than $200. It's in rather good shape as well. It only came with the power adapter, but then again, laptops don't really come with much.

Greta, my Gateway laptop, serves me well. It's still nice to have a backup just in case Greta ever has to go out of service for any reason. The Acer won't be nearly as fast as Greta, but for an emergency backup, it will do perfectly fine.

Outside of that, it's going to be the music machine. My awesome PC sound system needs a dedicated computer for that.

one hour until work day is over...

Nearly done with Acer laptop restoration, and it seems Vista Basic is running much better now due to the refresh. Probably because the previous owner didn't remove McAfee and some unnecessary bloatware. They did get rid of their data though which is good, but I restored the system to play it safe.

Being Vista, it's quite odd seeing the old XP-style taskbar again. I have gotten used to the neat combined icons of Win7 and above, but no biggie. I will just pin Opera and UltraPlayer to quick launch.

In regards to the bloatware, it did come with NTI MediaMaker 8 and a 30 day trial of PowerDirector V6. I may give PowerDirector a quick spin, but I will eventually uninstall it since it's so old and it doesn't compare to Lilly and Premiere. I also had to remove Google Desktop since was discontinued back in 2011.

Though the Intel Celeron 585 is 64bit capable, Vista Basic is 32bit. Again, no biggie since the Acer will be a music/backup laptop anyway.

I have a question for David and Blake.

Do you know what would cause a laptop to shut down and restart without warning? The Acer seems to do that at very random times, usually after the system tries doing a resource intensive task. I downloaded HWMonitor, and the CPU temps range from 110F under light loads to around 130F during resource intensive tasks.

I haven't yet tested the memory, but I am getting a 32bit copy of Ubuntu for testing as well as for the MemTest86+ program since I don't feel like wasting an entire DVD-R for a small program, and I'm not sure if the Acer can boot from a USB disk.

The Vista restore didn't fix the issue, and while I was trying to boot PCLinuxOS 64bit, the system shut down too.

It seems to point at a potential overheating issue as it seems to occur whenever the system undergoes a resource intensive task and the CPU fan is blowing full speed.

I searched on Google, and I got everything from potential motherboard or hardware problems to faulty RAM.

Am I right on my theory, or do you have any other ideas on what it could be?

54 degrees centigrade isn't really that hot; what's more alarming is if it ran at like 80 to a hundred like what happened once to my GT240 before I changed the thermal paste on it. Though of course I'm not ruling out the possibility of an overheating issue.

And yes, you're right about your Acer having a possible hardware problem. See if you could do a RAM sanity check first with Memtest86+, preferably a two-pass check. If that didn't turn up any apparent errors, it could be due to blown or faulty caps or other components in your laptop's motherboard. Such may require either a reflow/reball, or worse, replacement.

huckleberrypie Wrote:54 degrees centigrade isn't really that hot; what's more alarming is if it ran at like 80 to a hundred like what happened once to my GT240 before I changed the thermal paste on it. Though of course I'm not ruling out the possibility of an overheating issue.

And yes, you're right about your Acer having a possible hardware problem. See if you could do a RAM sanity check first with Memtest86+, preferably a two-pass check. If that didn't turn up any apparent errors, it could be due to blown or faulty caps or other components in your laptop's motherboard. Such may require either a reflow/reball, or worse, replacement.

I decided to take a look at the AC adapter that came with the laptop, and I might have been given the wrong one. The Acer requires 19V 3.42a, while the adapter I got is 19V 1.58A output. I Googled the model number, and said adapter is meant for an Acer Aspire One, a Netbook. The power block also feels hot to the touch; not enough to cause a burn, but hot enough to be a concern.

If I still knew where Chrysanthemum's old AC adapter was I could check to see if it's compatible. If not, I may have to borrow Greta's if the specs are or above the Acer's requirements.

I believe the AC adapter isn't giving enough power to the Acer, and I noticed that the power offs also seem to happen when there is a USB hard disk connected and you try to read something off the DVD drive.

EDIT: Looks like Greta's AC adapter will do just fine, hopefully. Same voltage, 4.84A output and same polarity. Greta will have to go offline on occasion until I can get the proper adapter for the Acer.