How Many Acer 5672 Users did a full format?? - Page 2

What did you do?

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?

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.

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!".

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!

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/for...ords=&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/note...0_5670/driver/ Acer ftp site for 5672 drivers. http://dban.sourceforge.net/ Darik's Boot & Nuke site.

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.

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.

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

You could have done the conversion in windows at the CMD prompt.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...onvertfat.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...-%20070605.pdf

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

You are right. A nice conservative approach.
But some of us are just chronic tinkerers.

I did first thing.. xp pro