help with formatting Acer Ferrari 3000LMi

[sloane]

Hi....
I have an Acer Ferrari 3000 LMi for almost 3 years now.
problems :
- it's slow, esp when working on photoshop.
- notebook's not reacting or taking a long time to react when a new usb device
(flashdisk, camera etc) is plugged.
- battery only last 30 mins now. (I read somewhere if u're always plugging the
laptop, u need to take the battery out, so I did for 1,5 years, and now the battery
only last 30 mins, I already asked acer tech support, explained to me dat battery
life deteriorate in time even when not in use)
Battery conditioning doesn't solve this problem.
- i have weird message that pops up 6 times (each time) saying "windows - No
Disk. There is no disk in the drive, please insert a disk into drive" everytime I turn
my laptop on, after signing in to windows and it also happens from time to time for
no particular reason, which I keep on clicking "cancel" 6 times, but it's not a virus.
- sometimes I can't burn files on a blank cd, it's fine if there are already files on
the cd
- losing control on mouse scroll, mouse is in a hideous state where paintjob's
flaking, and mouse top cover comes off.
- the alphabets on keyboard are disappearing
- when i press ctrl-alt-del , it says "Task Manager has been disabled by your
administrator" HUH??? i'm the err.. administrator here and i don't recall disabling
anything.
- LCD screen is still perfect though
- notebook shell/outer cover is almost scratch free
- inbuilt microphone somehow cease to function, did fine on netmeeting, msn ,
yahoo, skype, but one day, it just doesn't work anymore.

Thinking of selling it, But somehow i still wanna make it right.
(My sis has an Asus notebook for 5 years now, dunno what type, but specs are
lower than my Acer Ferrari, battery still last 2 hours although she never ever takes
it out of the notebook, alphabets on keyboard still intact, performance still good,
only it makes a crazy creaky sound when you close it up)

Anyway, for the Acer Ferrari 3000Lmi
I have 1 system cd and 2 recovery cd from acer.
I've already backed up all data to an external harddisk.

So.................. questions by a computer dummy , aka me :)
1. Is it easy to format ur notebook ? just follow onscreen instructions rite ?
Will formatting my most of these problems go away ?

2. My C: drive holds 30 GB and D: 10 GB, Can I change that ? Would that be
difficult ? I was adviced to get a partition magic program ?

3. During my 3 years with Acer, I've never updated any driver, usually I go to
windows update and antivirus update, that's it.
So basically I don't need to update any specific driver, right ?

4. Is there anything else I should know about ?

5. If I do sell it in the current condition, would the price be lower than if I've
already formatted it? (assuming that everything's gonna go smoothly with the
formatting)

6. Basically if I give up and sell it in its current condition, All I have to do is erase
all of my datas/photos/documents etc. and it'll be all set ???
Or would ppl still be able to somehow retrieve/recover all my data ?

Thank you :)
sloane

[Evaders99]

1) Formatting may or may not help. Some of it is just system wear (esp the battery). If you have a system restore disk or a Windows installation CD, you can easily reformat / reinstall.


2) Yes, but you need Partition Magic to do so

3) You will probably want to upgrade all the latest drivers from Acer's website. Why? Bug and security fixes

4) -

5) Of course, format it before you sell it. You don't want your personal information out there for others to take. Even better, just take out the hard drive and sell it without the hard drive.

6) It is possible to retrieve data even after formatting, however few have that kind of time or skill to do so. I would still say to take out the hard drive and sell it hard-drive-less

[sloane]

thx evaders.... I'll format it today and hopefully won't encounter any of the previous problems anymore.
i'll post later about my after-format notebook condition. :)

[JRSCCivic98]

Don't spend your money on partition magic if you're going to reinstall Windows anyway. Just delete both of the previous partitions and create one new one when you reinstall XP on the hard drive. That will fix your partition issues.

Also, update the BIOS from Acer, but as for the drivers, find the thread in this forum that's titled "All the Drivers you need for your Ferrari 3000" or something like that. Get all the latest drivers from that thread. Acer doesn't update anything on their site. Video card drivers will come from ATI directly, sound will come from Realtek directly, etc. Acer is pretty useless when it comes to updating their drivers.

[sloane]

Hi JRSCCivic98

How do you delete previous partitions and create a new one ?
coz i think my XP is in the acer recovery cd.

Besides that, what about hidden partition ?
Do I have to save it or anything like that ?
Acer tech hotline told me that formatting might cause the lost of this hidden partition.
other acer tech guy told me to go ahead and format coz hidden partition won't be affected at all.
I'm lost .

Thx for the info on updating drivers :)

[Evaders99]

Generally you format a partition. To repartition, you essentially destroy the current partitions... programs like Partition Magic are designed to do this non-destructively. The built-in command line function to do this is fdisk
It's a little complicated, but you should be able to do it

[JRSCCivic98]

If you're going to use the Acer recovery CDs you might as well just sell the laptop. All that crap is going to do is put it back to factory default with all the stupid partitions setup it came with and all the crap drivers it was loaded with. What you need to do is get your hands on an XP CD (a real one) and install XP from that. (They are a dime a dozen.) While in the setup you'll be able to delete any partition you want and recreate a full one out of the entire drive. Once that's done you load up the drivers for each of your components from those company's websites. (i.e. ATI for the video drivers, etc.)

[Orlbuckeye]

1) Formatting may or may not help. Some of it is just system wear (esp the battery). If you have a system restore disk or a Windows installation CD, you can easily reformat / reinstall.


2) Yes, but you need Partition Magic to do so

3) You will probably want to upgrade all the latest drivers from Acer's website. Why? Bug and security fixes

4) -

5) Of course, format it before you sell it. You don't want your personal information out there for others to take. Even better, just take out the hard drive and sell it without the hard drive.

6) It is possible to retrieve data even after formatting, however few have that kind of time or skill to do so. I would still say to take out the hard drive and sell it hard-drive-less

Evader they have a program you can download from Downloads.com called 12 Ghost Shredder that will delete files to make them unrecoverable. It's available for trial for free and 29.95 to purchase.

http://www.download.com/12Ghosts-Shredder/3000-2248_4-10624695.html?tag=lst-0-1

[Orlbuckeye]

The hidden partition is the image that is used to create the Factory default settings Disks. Once that is removed you won't be able to create a system restore disk unless you get one from Acer.