How Many Acer 5672 Users did a full format??

[KinzaKracker]

Just Curious how many people wiped the entire harddrive and reinstalled a the OS. whether Xp home, Pro, Linux, Etc.

[KinzaKracker]

***MODERATOR DELETE MY POLL
For some reason, it didn't post my questions, it just posted the default numbers...akward but yea..

[fjgold1]

One of the first things I did. As a matter of fact bought a retail copy of XP
Pro at same time I bought machine. Since I was giving my older HP lappy
to my sister /w XP pro oem installed I figured I might need another XP disc.
Especially since I knew 5672 did not come with full install disc.
I have since installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (linux) on it dual boot.

[Divine_Madcat]

i just cleaned up alot of the junk - no real need to format, IMO. AFter all the formatting is done, you end up putting most of the stuff back on, so i don't see a point in wasting the time.

[Arnifix]

I reformatted, and now the Orbicam won't detect. Claims drivers are invalid. Sigh. PS. does anybody know if the Win XP key that comes with the 5672 is somehow locked to the hardware or can it be used on any machine? Because I installed Pro, as Home is just bung, and don't really want the key.

[KinzaKracker]

lol..format not necessary, even after editing my services and disabling all non essential and going ninja on msconfig, still had darn near 40 processes, i now stay at 24-30, and that pqservice partition at the beginning of the harddrive slows ur machine down a bit, as things load faster the closer to the front of the hdd they are...hince what defrag is supposed to do, i just know i tried to get it all tip top performance, but by the 2nd day was like naw this isn't right, this is dual core, where's all the talk i been hearing, i felt like i bought into hype..but naw once i formatted i felt satisfied....well except for a 5400rpm hdd, but i'll hold out until the hybrids come out, as it will reduce the amount of heat put out, and reduced heat on this baby is always a plus.

[fjgold1]

except for a 5400rpm hdd, but i'll hold out until the hybrids come out, as it will reduce the amount of heat put out, and reduced heat on this baby is always a plus.
Hi KinzaKacker,
Will the hybrids play well with XP, I thought they were for Vista?
Wonder if they will work with Ubuntu linux?

[Divine_Madcat]

If the makers did it right, it SHOULD play fine on any system - hopefully, they made it so they "hybrid" part of the HDD is transparent to the system, and the system doesn't know (or care) what it's writing to (HDD or flash).

[fjgold1]

If the makers did it right, it SHOULD play fine on any system - hopefully, they made it so they "hybrid" part of the HDD is transparent to the system, and the system doesn't know (or care) what it's writing to (HDD or flash).
Hope your right. But to make use of the fast boot features I would think the OS (XP, Ubuntu) would have to know to place the bootup items etc. on the flash portion of the drive as well as the drive proper. Then again maybe the drives controller hardware will have instructions to accomplish the same results. Will google for a "white paper" on this. As far as heat is concerned any reduction would be welcome. My machine stays pretty cool anyway
(CPU temps are reported by Notebook Hardware Control proggie at ~124° F-150° F, while my HDD gets as hot as ~129° F-135° F) but anything to reduce heat can only extend life of components. Wonder when first drives will hit the
streets?

[KinzaKracker]

yea, they way it works is instead of the hdd constantly spinning, certain data is written to the hd, yea...i saw a article on this on digg.com or engadget a while back,

[fjgold1]

yea, they way it works is instead of the hdd constantly spinning, certain data is written to the hd, yea...i saw a article on this on digg.com or engadget a while back,
I bet the drive keeps spinning. There is no gain to spinning back up whenever
needed. It's supposed to be harder on drives than staying spun up.
I think the big advantage is that having a lot of boot items on the flash speeds
startup. Also having prefetch items on flash speeds programs up. The
heat and power issues would come from the drive arm not being constantly
seeking. This is what I get from the Hype. Anyway will be looking
to get one of the first ones as well as a Merom proc. After all that's what I got the extended warranty for. :001_rolle

[melo]

Hello people, i want to buy Acer 5672, but I´m afraid of this overheating around touchpad issue (http://www.notebookforums.com/thread162449.html), so can you please tell me if you have experienced this as well?

[fjgold1]

Hello people, i want to buy Acer 5672, but I´m afraid of this overheating around touchpad issue (http://www.notebookforums.com/thread162449.html), so can you please tell me if you have experienced this as well?
Hi Melo,
I own one of these fine machines and they do get warm. But in
my opinion not dangerously hot. I have measured the area to the right
of the touch pad as high as 125° F using a IR thermometer. I also monitor
the processor temps using Notebook Hardware Control (NHC)

http://www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm as well as HDD temps.

This neat little system tray item uses ACPI sensor to monitor CPU temps.
and S.M.A.R.T. sensor for the HDD. I have not seen CPU temps. greater than
150°F-160°F for the processors with idle temps around 122°F. HDD temps max
out at 135°F with heavy disk use and hover around 118°F for normal use. I
have the processors set to full speed, all the time in XP and allow Ubuntu
to control them when I am in Linux. My temps in Ubuntu are about the
same. Although some folks have reported very high temps my experience
has been positive. I use my machine as a desktop replacement. When I
in use on desktop I use an aluminum base device called an iLap.

http://www.raindesigninc.com/ilap.html

This simple device does two things well. It holds machine off desk promoting
natural air flow and it's made of aluminum, a great natural heat sink.
It's pitched at the Mac Powerbook crowd but I don't think it cares one whit
if you use it on a PC. LOL

I think you should take advantage of this great deal in notebooks.
If you can get the x1600 video card, do so. At least that seems to be the wisdom around here. Or maybe wait till the Merom version comes out (soon).
Merom is the next gen of Core Duo processor. Core Duo2 is supposed to use less power etc.

I plan on changing my processor when I can lay my hands on a Merom.
It's supposed to be fairly easy to upgrade.

If you can swing it get the extended warranty just in case. I did. It
cost me $124.00 for two more years.

[melo]

Thank you, Frank. Actually I have noticed that here in Brazil it´s not possible to find a 5672 yet, so i´ll need to get a slower laptop (and colder, I hope).

[Quotacious]

They will be coming out in 2007... and apparantly not with 1 GB as initially demo'd.

http://news.com.com/Samsung+goes+commercial+with+hybrid+hard+drive/2100-1044_3-6072557.html
Samsung's hybrid drives, which work with Microsoft's Vista, will come in a variety of capacities when they appear in computers next year. The drives, though, will contain either 128MB or 256MB of Samsung's OneNAND flash memory. OneNAND is much faster than typical NAND memory.

As for the drive spinning, it'll definately not be spinning all the time, otherwise there wouldn't be any power saving. :p

Spinning drives are one of the most power-hungry components in a computer, so allowing it to idle will lead to about an extra half-hour of battery life on a notebook, said Don Barnetson, director of flash memory at Samsung Semiconductor. "We can cut about 70 to 90 percent of the power consumption" of hard drives, he said.

The drive will also be less prone to break down, he added.

I know I wouldn't waiting until 2007 just for that. I'm waiting on the Ferarri 1000... I can change the drive next year, lol. There might be 7200rpm ones eventually... :surreal:

[fjgold1]

[quote=Quotacious]They will be coming out in 2007... and apparantly not with 1 GB as initially demo'd.

http://news.com.com/Samsung+goes+commercial+with+hybrid+hard+drive/2100-1044_3-6072557.html


As for the drive spinning, it'll definately not be spinning all the time, otherwise there wouldn't be any power saving. :p
QUOTE]

I may be wrong but even at idle a HDD is still spinning. I don't
think they stop altogether. Don't know for sure as I don't
use any powersaving features. I still think that having to spinup from a stop
when needed is harder on the drives than from a slower idle speed.
Again I probably don't know what I'm talking about. LOL

[Fera2k]

I've bought my Acer 5672 two weeks ago, and I did a full format, and now I'm using Win XP Pro. Everythings works fine for me.

But I had a problem. My laptop came with an Acer program called "Acer Arcade Suite" with came with CinemaVision. I enjoyed this program very much, and would like to install it again. The problem is that I can´t find it anywhere to download. I've already looked in many related acer sites, with no success!

Does anybody know anything about the "Acer Arcade Multimedia Suite" ?

Thanks.

[fjgold1]

I've bought my Acer 5672 two weeks ago, and I did a full format, and now I'm using Win XP Pro. Everythings works fine for me.

But I had a problem. My laptop came with an Acer program called "Acer Arcade Suite" with came with CinemaVision. I enjoyed this program very much, and would like to install it again. The problem is that I can´t find it anywhere to download. I've already looked in many related acer sites, with no success!

Does anybody know anything about the "Acer Arcade Multimedia Suite" ?

Thanks.
I believe that suite is on the recovery DVD you should have been
nagged into creating. I think you have to run the full recovery to
install it. Of course you would lose your XP Pro install. I don't know
if you can run just the installer off the DVD. Browse it and see if you can find
it.
Update:
Just checked my DVD couldn't find any obvious reference to
a stand alone installer for Arcade Suite.

[Sucka]

Didn't even boot into Windows before i reinstalled. First boot was to my own XP disc.

[Dumbo]

I finaly managed to reinstall it (they needed to replace the drive:thumbdown ), but now i have a problem...i can't install the drivers for lan (ethernet) card...is there some trick i don't know or am i just a dumbass??:$ :$

EDIT: I did it:D

[fjgold1]

I finaly managed to reinstall it (they needed to replace the drive:thumbdown ), but now i have a problem...i can't install the drivers for lan (ethernet) card...is there some trick i don't know or am i just a dumbass??:$ :$

EDIT: I did it:D What did you do?

[DarthAcer]

I may be wrong but even at idle a HDD is still spinning. I don't
think they stop altogether. Don't know for sure as I don't
use any powersaving features. I still think that having to spinup from a stop
when needed is harder on the drives than from a slower idle speed.
Again I probably don't know what I'm talking about. LOL

You are correct in that sustaining rotation is generally cheaper in terms of power than stop/start cycling. Spin-up easily uses twice the power of regular read/write operations. Theoretically, if you had everything in memory and did not need to access HD much, sustaining rotation might end up more expensive (in power) in the long run. But show me a computer with Windows (not talking Linux here) that does not try to access hard drive almost continuously. Don't know if every copy of Microsoft OS has some gremlins in it or what? :cursing:

[Zoinks]

Formatted my 5672 (one partition), and installed XP Media Centre. Everything works fine. Didn't install any Acer eWhatever programs except the Launch Manager. The only thing I'm missing from the default install is the acer screen saver, other than that, the laptop has been great.

[KinzaKracker]

i can tell u want, my fingers have gotten alot stronger since i bought the 5672, like the skin got thicker or something..lol and now i hardly notice the heat, kinda like when younger and i played guitar,

[Ghis]

I did after a few days because I wanted to delete the hidden partition and it didn't work for some reason.
Then Win XP wouldn't load so I was like "I might as well reformat now!".

[Auror]

hey guys! I just got mine a couple of days ago and Windows acts kinda funny. Sometimes it won't work USB devices ... or the card reader will freeze while browsing photos on my SD card. I also had a lot of freezes on the 'turn off - logging off' screens. Had to turn the computer off the hard way (pressing the power button for a couple of seconds). So all in all I think I'm going to install a fresh system on mine.
And here's the thing. Before I do that, should I download all the essential drivers for the hardware (VGA, sound chip, card reader, WiFi, USB2.0 etc. etc.) from Acers website, or does Windows XP Home recognize most of these devices automaticly without troubling me to download them from internet?

If the Windows doesn't do it - which drivers (for which devices?) should I download now? Maybe you guys have some kind of bundle of drivers for Acer 5672. I remember that the first time I booted Windows on mine notebook a program of Acers loaded and started installing the drivers for everything automaticly (I could only see the names of the devices, and the installer checking them - one after another) - then it rebooted and everything was done.

Don't ask me why I didn't record a recovery DVD ... I just didn't ... didn't even have any dvds/cds on me ... I don't have it now either ... :-/

thanks in advance!

[kronium]

Hello, Newbie here. When I reinstalled windows, there was a C and D partition as well as some kind of tools.(on it's own partition?) I deleted C and D and recreated a C NTFS partition, but can I safely remove the Tools?

Also, I'm sure this is known, but I used an old OEM XP Home disk from a Dell I had, and using the XP Home product key under the laptop, I successfully activated and registered XP. No need to buy a new copy if you just want home. I think the retail version won't work, has to be OEM.

Thank You!

[fjgold1]

Hello, Newbie here. When I reinstalled windows, there was a C and D partition as well as some kind of tools.(on it's own partition?) I deleted C and D and recreated a C NTFS partition, but can I safely remove the Tools?

Also, I'm sure this is known, but I used an old OEM XP Home disk from a Dell I had, and using the XP Home product key under the laptop, I successfully activated and registered XP. No need to buy a new copy if you just want home. I think the retail version won't work, has to be OEM.

Thank You!
Hi and welcome,
You should have been prompted by your factory install to create
a DVD or CD's for recovery purposes. That disc will when booted to
will recreate you factory install. It got it's info from that PQ service
partition but is a standalone installer, it has everything needed to restore
you machine to factory new condition. Softwarewise that is. In it's
original unaltered condition your machine is capable of restoring
from the PQ partition only. You can accomplish this by pressing
Alt + F10 at boot or any time while in windoze. Read about from Acer
here.

http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal20.cfm?recordid=639&formid=3425&website=AcerPanAm.com/us&siteid=7293&words=all&keywords=&areaid=7

The PQ service partition is much more than tools.
I had made and subsequently tested a restore DVD. So I felt
comfortable using Darik's Boot & Nuke to completely clear
my HDD and install XP pro from a retail disk I bought from Compusa at the time that I bought my 5672. I did download
all the drivers from Acer Euro and store them on my USB
HDD to use when I finished installing XP pro.

ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_5620_5670/driver/ Acer ftp site
for 5672 drivers.


http://dban.sourceforge.net/ Darik's Boot & Nuke site.

[jonepner]

Have had my machine for 1 week. Did not reformat, but the first thing I did (after burning a default state DVD using Acer e-recovery) was to convert both the C and D partitions (the 2 60 GB drives) to NTFS using partition magic.

I reccomend doing this before anything else, since the conversion process is extremely quick when you don't have any data and the drives are 'optimized' in their virgin state.

[randomperson2]

So, did everyone get a 5672 with crappy XP Home or something? I'm a little lost as to why you would reformat the computer as soon as you get it...

[fjgold1]

So, did everyone get a 5672 with crappy XP Home or something? I'm a little lost as to why you would reformat the computer as soon as you get it...
Yes it comes with XP home and useless Acer software. But will suit most
users right out of box as Acer intended. But I am a tinkerer. I would never
own a computer that I couldn't or woudn't modify to suit me. It is a really nice machine with a lot of potential. I have XP pro installed as well as Ubuntu Linux. It is not very stock as far as software is concerned and when I can lay
my hands on a Merom processor it will have a new brain. I did say I was a tinkerer. The hardware stuff will probably void my warranty. Oh Well.:awdance:

[jonepner]

All Acer computers come with drives formatted as FAT32, an inferior format.

[fjgold1]

Have had my machine for 1 week. Did not reformat, but the first thing I did (after burning a default state DVD using Acer e-recovery) was to convert both the C and D partitions (the 2 60 GB drives) to NTFS using partition magic.

I reccomend doing this before anything else, since the conversion process is extremely quick when you don't have any data and the drives are 'optimized' in their virgin state.
You could have done the conversion in windows at the CMD prompt.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx
The only time I used my copy of PM to convert I ended up with an unbootable machine. XP handles the conversion just fine.
You are absolutely right about doing conversion early.
If you do convert to NTFS and nothing else the D2D feature will not work
as the drives need to be Fat32.
http://websupport.acer.com.tw/upload/knowledge/32/eRecovery%20FAQ%20-%20070605.pdf

[funkfactorus]

yeah - the main reasons for initial reformat re-format were FAT32 partitions (who the hell came up with the bright idea of shipping them with FAT32?) and XP Home - wanted XP Pro. Also nice not to have all that annoying bundled software.

Actually just got mine couple hours ago. will be re-formatting shortly. Just taking some benchmarks first.

[swopes]

I reformatted, and now the Orbicam won't detect. Claims drivers are invalid. Sigh. PS. does anybody know if the Win XP key that comes with the 5672 is somehow locked to the hardware or can it be used on any machine? Because I installed Pro, as Home is just bung, and don't really want the key.


same problem solved by d/l from acer european site *not* from panamerican one.

logitec ccd driver.

I've noticed much better performance after reinstall.

[funkfactorus]

I kinda like Acer Arcade though - anyone know how do keep it after re-install? Is it download-able from Acer site? I see there's a default.reg in the application directory - maybe I can just copy the files and run the reg entries to get it to work?

Also:
Did anyone find anything else they missed after having formatted?

[DeadKenny]

So, did everyone get a 5672 with crappy XP Home or something? I'm a little lost as to why you would reformat the computer as soon as you get it...
Indeed. I find Acer's aren't crammed with too much extra bloat. It's just a few tools to make the Acer specific hardware useable, drivers you'll have to install anyway and stuff like Arcade which you can uninstall if you don't want it.

XP Home isn't all that crappy either. I've always used XP Pro and thought I'd not like the Home version, but to be totally honest I cannot see much need for Pro at home and certainly not on my laptop. It has most stuff, it just lacks things like the ability to join a domain and encrypting file system (the latter I'd strongly recommend avoiding anyway).

I have XP Pro on my desktop as I do some development work that in particular needs IIS which I think isn't on Home, but I really don't need it on the laptop.

Home doesn't have Remote Desktop 'server' support so connecting from another machine is tricky but I believe you can still do it with the invitation method with Remote Assistance and possibly through Netmeeting's share desktop feature. On my laptop I never need to connect to it from another machine, and I just use it as a client to connect to my XP Pro desktop.


yeah - the main reasons for initial reformat re-format were FAT32 partitions (who the hell came up with the bright idea of shipping them with FAT32?) and XP Home - wanted XP Pro. Also nice not to have all that annoying bundled software.
You can convert FAT32 to NTFS. Some people argue that you may not end up with the desirable 4k cluster sizes if you convert but in my experience you do with current drive sizes. If you want to be sure you can use Partition Magic to convert to NTFS with 4k clusters.

The annoying bundled software you just uninstall.


Frankly I just see reformatting as a waste of time. In fact not just with bundled stuff but also the practise of reformatting frequently over time. It's something people used to do with Win9x but you just don't need to these days. My current XP Pro desktop is an upgrade from Win2k years ago and has undergone many hardware upgrades and it's still lightning fast without a single reformat.

[funkfactorus]

Yes, I could convert, but I want to run XP Pro. One of the reason I need it is due to Home's inability to join a domain, since I sometimes need to do work work. Plus I've seen posts claiming performance increase after re-format.

Additionally, I like a clean install, just for my sanity's sake, since I know exactly what I install, that there are no spy/hidden programs, etc.

I just want to be sure I can get all the device drivers working and hopefully the Acer Arcade proggie, which is kinda neat.

Oh well, if anything, I can always just restore my recovery/backup DVD. It's a good idea - I have also installed some generic apps that you'd need on any computer, such as office, winzip, etc; also got rid of some startup iterms and services, set my appearance and folder settings.

[fjgold1]

Indeed. I find Acer's aren't crammed with too much extra bloat. It's just a few tools to make the Acer specific hardware useable, drivers you'll have to install anyway and stuff like Arcade which you can uninstall if you don't want it.

XP Home isn't all that crappy either. I've always used XP Pro and thought I'd not like the Home version, but to be totally honest I cannot see much need for Pro at home and certainly not on my laptop. It has most stuff, it just lacks things like the ability to join a domain and encrypting file system (the latter I'd strongly recommend avoiding anyway).

I have XP Pro on my desktop as I do some development work that in particular needs IIS which I think isn't on Home, but I really don't need it on the laptop.

Home doesn't have Remote Desktop 'server' support so connecting from another machine is tricky but I believe you can still do it with the invitation method with Remote Assistance and possibly through Netmeeting's share desktop feature. On my laptop I never need to connect to it from another machine, and I just use it as a client to connect to my XP Pro desktop.



You can convert FAT32 to NTFS. Some people argue that you may not end up with the desirable 4k cluster sizes if you convert but in my experience you do with current drive sizes. If you want to be sure you can use Partition Magic to convert to NTFS with 4k clusters.

The annoying bundled software you just uninstall.


Frankly I just see reformatting as a waste of time. In fact not just with bundled stuff but also the practise of reformatting frequently over time. It's something people used to do with Win9x but you just don't need to these days. My current XP Pro desktop is an upgrade from Win2k years ago and has undergone many hardware upgrades and it's still lightning fast without a single reformat. You are right. A nice conservative approach.
But some of us are just chronic tinkerers.;)

[AOXOMOXOA]

I did first thing.. xp pro

[melo]

I did first thing.. xp pro


I spent a month using XP Home, doing tests about all features before anything.

Then, as everything was working fine (bluetooth, orbicam, wireless lan, dvd-rw etc..), and as I felt a difference in performance from my desktop computer which is setup with XP Professional, I decided to do a full format.

I downloaded all the drivers at once from ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_5620_5670/ because although my laptop came from USA it would be terrible to have to click every link on the acerpanam.com drivers page.

Later I found that was totally unnecessary! When I went to burn my second recovery DVD (the one created on the first setup had a problem, with the media perhaps...) I found that Acer Erecovery offers an APPLICATION CD. I don´t remember people here talking about this possibility!

So I booted from a XP Pro CD, formated drive C with NTFS and installed almost every Acer application on the CD, disabled some bloatingware from startup with Sysinternals Autoruns (thanks for the clever guy here who told me about that app!) and now this super machine runs smoothly and faster!

I think there might be some other difference between XP PRO and HOME besides the networking thing, it seems to me like PRO allows user to work more heavily on the RAM than in HOME edition, like happens wih STARTER edition and all those limitations, am I possibly right?

[Storm PCs]

Installed Media Center Edition IMMEDIATELY! Bloody BLOATWARE...

[ucf713]

Formated and installed Vista.

[Econ]

Hey ucf713,

How are things going with vista driverwise?
I'm gonna install Vista tonight on my aspire 5601.

greetz,
econ

[ucf713]

Hey ucf713,

How are things going with vista driverwise?
I'm gonna install Vista tonight on my aspire 5601.

greetz,
econ


Everything worked great except for the camera and bluetooth. Had to manually install those drivers. Other then that, Vista is a lot faster the XP and my overall impressions are very good.

[Uncle Dirt]

Thanks for posting teh FTP. It was very helpful!