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Just flashed the old 3A20 Bios, but see no changes in CPU temperatures. So going back to 3A25.

If it is just your GPU that has the problem, then you should not be worried. That is an easy part to replace in the Aspire 1710 since it is easily removable and could be performed yourself by just having Acer send the part to you under warranty. As far as hard drives, that is the nature of that technology. That can happen to any system.

Depending on the country you are in, you may still be able to extend your warranty to 3 year standard or 3 year total notebook protection.

Send it to me Seriously...I'll test the crap outta the thing

No, that deals with image enhancments, not clock settings. Maybe temp settings, or if you see some thing on battery life? Thanks for looking. If you find anything else please post it thanks.

Ok...I downloaded Riva Tuner and this is what I got from the Diagnostic report. It says the core clock is 351MHz. So my question is, is it safe to manipulate these settings? Supposidly the Go5700 supports a core clock of 450. Hmmm maybe this topic deserves a new thread...what do you think?

Hi,

please, can you see in your 1712's bios if is possible to use a 250GB hd in it ??
To do that, can you see in your bios (and if you can tell me name and version namber to looking for info on it by myself) if is possible a value greater that 150 GB for the hd intalled ??
The place is where is usually written "autodetect", see if some values are pre-selected and if is present a maximum value admitted.
Is a lot of time that I am seeking this information, please help me (and us) to know the answer.

Thanks a lot.

The bios is EXTREMELY limiting. There isn't even a hard drive detection option.

Adam I was checking out review of this laptop, allthough I am not really interested in it, but I came accross your website where you listed new 800x series for preorder. I was wondering when do you expect to receive those notebooks? Also do you know if this is alloy or plastic shell they use?

I ran it with a WD 250GB drive and 400DDR ram (2-512MB=1024MB). It ran fine, Windows recognized the 250GB and Sandra noted the 400DDR. The benchmarks for RAM went from the 4,000/4,013 it ran with the 333DDR (RAM Acer sends with it) to 4293/4300 with the 400DDR I installed.

Thanks Adam for the confirmation about hd and mem.
Now it remains only to resolve the problem that Ransaak have described : the spin down of the hd when not used.

Do you have some ideas ???

They enabled "hard disk spin down" in the bios and there is no way to change it without a re-written bios. The problem boils down to this:

1) They used a desktop hard drive which is not ACPI compliant. Most hard drives aren't so no big mistake here.

2) They enabled ACPI in the BIOS. Also no big deal, 98% of the components and the OS are ACPI compliant. ACPI is a way for XP to control the power management features of components without having to use the BIOS. SOunds great and it is UNLESS the component isn't ACPI compliant as is the Seagate Hard drive. In this case, ONLY the BIOS can control all of the power management features of the device.

3) They enabled HARD DISK SPIN DOWN on the BIOS and then deleted the option in the Acer custom BIOS to change it. This is the big mistake. Now the hard drive is under the BIOS control for power management since it doesn't have ACPI support. They made the wrong choice in my opinion and gave us no way to fix it.


When I talked to them on the phone today they actually said "well this isn't a true desktop replacement notebook." WTF! Why in the hell would anyone want a 17lb notebook to do anything OTHER than replacea desktop.

I'm going to return mine. They made it pretty clear that they'd have to go to Taiwan and rewrite the BIOS and they dont foresee doing that. (They actually said that to me).

I'm going to throw another $500 bucks into my budget and get the 8790 or HP ZD7000.

From the quote above, Adam used a WD 250. Both the 200 and 250 are ATA100 I believe.

My BIOS version is T3a20...
I've seen the Jansport Thinker backpack. It nearly fits in there and you have little or no protection on the sides.

TO: flight_guy747

Apologies, this may have already been referred to in this thread. I have a modified 1714Msi. I've added Maxtor Diamond Plus 9 (ATA133) 200Gb, and have had no problems with the upgrade... Can't particularly see why yours shouldn't work.

While I am here, a quick message for DW Strickland - Is your laptop a 1714, or have you modified a previous 171X model? If so, how did you manage to upgrade the Video card to 128MB? Did you order from Acer spares?

I used to have an Advent PC laptop (a make owned by PC World in the UK), and this used to use desktop memory and processor. 2 years ago I had a 64 Mb graphics card, 512Mb RAM and a PIII 1.4Ghz processor. This is the perfect upgrade for me. I've never owned a desktop machine, as I've never been one for games. For those who do not just want this as a gaming machine The 1714 is also very capable for severe video editing, and re-encoding...

PS: Someone mentioned a problem with booting when a mass storage device or external drive is connected to the USB ports (ignore me if I misread this somewhere). I have never had this problem - using either a USB Key or an Archos AV300 (80Gb) on & plugged into the ports while booting up.

To those who may find them useful, here is a link to drivers/manuals/bios etc:
ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_1710/

Wraith,

What bios version do you have?