Posts Tagged ‘ASPIRE’

Install Acer Aspire notebook 5100-5023 Windows XP 32-bit Drivers – Fixing problems with Wireless, Video and TouchScreen

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Acer Aspire 5100 - 5023 Windows XP drivers download, acer aspire laptop picture

 

I had to fix one old notebook computer Acer Aspire model 5100 – 5023.
The PC was preloaded with Windows 32 bit XP by someone but the drivers were not installed. I tried installing the drivers downloading them from Acer.com's website drivers download section from here . However the PC in question as it was writen on the vendor sticker was not 5100 but some kind of 5100 modification laptop. Some of the few differences between Acer Aspire 5100 and Acer Aspire 5023 are 5100 is bundled with Camera and a TV Tuner, whether 5100-5023 is without WebCam and TV Tuner.

The most important drivers I've downloaded rom Acer.com's for me was the Wireless Adapter drivers, because without internet on it takes time downloading drivers from my notebook and moving them via an USB stick … I've downloaded drivers for Wireless as provided by website (Wireless_Atheros_5.3.0.67) but installing them though I didn't get any error and the drivers brought up the Wireless Adapter, somehow I couldn't connect to any wireless network protected with WPA2-PSK key (passphrase) encryption. The Windows XP installed by somebody before I received the laptop for repair was Service Pack 2 (SP2) and latest stable Win XP is with SP3 as well as a bunch pack of updates after SP3 so updating Win XP SP2 to Win XP SP3 would have probably take more time than a clean re-install. Besides that the Computer did not have any information to backup as it was bundled with a fresh Win XP SP2 so formatting was not a problem either.

Thus Ire-installed over OS, formatting with Quick Format and a clean latest Windows English XP SP3 .

After re-installing it took me a while of pondering until I figure out what drivers I need to install, I knew for sure there might a problem with Wireless Adapter as on the previous WIN XP installed it did not work. So before proceeding to download all for Acer Aspire 5100 from acer.com's website, I first used Everest 2.20 Home edition to check the exact PC hardware Vendors and consequentially look for the correct WI-FI driver. Everest identified the Wireless Adapter as

  • Atheros_AR5005G_Wireless_Network_Adapter_NE785H

so I looked on the Net for the driver. Actually there are some other brand notebooks which also come bundled with NE785H (i.e. Asus, HP). First I couldn't find correct driver for Acer and give a try installing a NE785H driver for Asus notebook this did not make the WI-FI work correctly, so after a further investigation I found Wireless NE785H 32 bit Windows XP driver for Acer laptops a mirror of is here

After installing this driver, I've downloaded all the rest of drivers from acer.com's website, for convenience of people who look for same Acer Aspire 5100 – 5023 drivers please check my drivers mirror here

For convenience, I've made also a Acer-Aspire-5100-5023-XP_Drivers.tar.gz archive of all drivers for Aspire 5100 – 5023  notebook here (Archive size is 256MB).

Two important notes to make here is I had a severe problem with the notebook touchscreen and for a long time I thought TouchScreen device is not working because of improperly intstalled driver (in Drivers provided by Acer.com there are two drivers provided for two different TouchPad devices – (Synaptics and Elantech). I tried installing them one by one and both together but in any case the TouchScreen did not react but keep hanging – fixing it was as simple as pressing simultaneously FN + F7!

Also another obstacle, I've faced was with the Video Card the notebook is with Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 as visible in Everest, drivers. In list of drivers on acer.com's website there was not a VGA driver for XP? This was puzzling so I googled and found few ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 drivers for other notebook vendors just like with Wireless. Downloading and testing other vendors drivers seem to install well but inside Control Panel -> System (Device Properties) -> Peripherals  Video Card was with yellow questionmark (not properly working) …

It took me a while to figure it out but later it appeared for Windows XP VGA drivers for Aspire 5100 – 5023 (ATI Radeon Xpress 1100) are there under the not so intuitive name Chipset_ATI_8.251.060427_XPx86.zip. Updating the improper driver inside System -> Peripherals -> Video Adapter with the one from the zip made the Video card finally work 🙂
With rest of PC hardware drivers, there was not issues, I just had to install as usual all rest from vendor ZIPs:

Audio_5_10_0_5273.zip
BTW_5_1_2535_0_utility_1500.zip
CPU Driver Ver.1.3.1.0.zip – For improved CPU work
FIR_SMC_5.1.3600.7_XPx86.zip – Infrared support and card reader
MODEM_Foxconn_7.62.0.0_XPx86.zip – for Integrated Foxconn Modem Wireless LAN_Broadcom_4.100.15.5_XPx86_A.zip – Driver for 5100's lancard
Bluetooth_Broadcom_5.1.2535.0_XPx86.zip – Driver for bluetooth device

Lastly as an article close up if you're living on the territory of The Netherlands (Arnhem , Nijmegen or the near cities) looking for a very Cheap repair (50 to 70 EUR) of your Windows OS PC or notebook contact me 🙂


Fix unworking Acer Aspire 5100 TouchPad / Turn on, turned off Acer Aspire 5100-5023 TouchPad

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Acer Aspire TouchPad on modem 5100 5023 how to fix weird touchpad hang up fix not working aspire 5100 touchpad
 

I have a task to fix one Acer Aspire 5100 Also known as Acer Aspire 5100-5023. After re-installing Windows XP on the notebook, I've downloaded correct laptop touchpad drivers as provided by acer.com's website here (TouchPad Section).There inside the ZIP, I've run all the 3 installers provided by Touchpad Driver Synaptics 8.2.19.0 .zip (e.g. Setup.exe, Elantech/setup.exe, Synaptics/Setup.exe).

When all installations were completed, after each one I had to do the standard restart.

For my surprise after Windows boot while testing TouchPad (scratching over it) the TouchPad moved the Mouse Pointer but, after a sec it stopped responding. This is the first time I face such problem so, my guess was either something is wrong with TouchPad Driver or / and the Driver is broken.

To make sure all is fine and driver show properly installed I checked if it is showing correctly installed in:

Control Panel -> System -> Hardware ->Device Manager

There all seem normal under:

Mice and other pointing devices menu I can see

PS/2 Compatible Mouse

Having this situation as you can guess I re-install TouchPad with a couple of driver versions , this not helped either. So after a bit of search on the net. I've got the solution to not responding TouchPad pointed in this Q&A thread

Solution was as easy as just pressing Fn + F7 key. I guess by mistake someone while testing the Function keys on this laptop disabled TouchPad device. The owner of the laptop had no idea about function keys so he never thought of this causes the whole issue. It seems stupidly enough Acer made the laptop function key remember the Function key choice, even after computer restart (pressing Fn+somenumber probably sets some settings in BIOS, so on next boot the settings keeps saved). BTW it might be worthy say, even re-installing with brand new Windows XP does not change a previously set Function setting. Actually it is rather strange why vendors make touchpads possible to disable; I never heard of anybody willing to disable his TouchPad ….

Also I've some people suggest Fn + F6 as a fix to those weird freezed TouchPad Problem, but I believe this are just rumors. Well that's, if you have the same Free Unresponding TouchPad on Acer another Notebook brand name, just enable pressing Fn + F7 keys or whatever Fn + Fx is on the notebook model.
Hope this helps someone 🙂

How to install Ubuntu Linux on Acer ASPIRE 5736Z Notebook / Get around the black screen install CD issue

Friday, July 1st, 2011

My sister’s newly bought laptop is Acer Aspire 5736Z . By the default this notebook comes with some kind of Linux distribution Linpus .
Even though this Linpus (crafted Linux especially for Acer notebooks) looked really nice, it prooved to be a piece of shit linux distro.
Linplus was unable to even establish a simple Wireless WPA2 protected connection with my wireless router, not to mention that the physical Linux consoles (CTRL+ALT+F1) were disabled …

This LinPlus was so bad that I couldn’t even launch any type of terminal on it (I was stuck!) so I decided to kill it and make a decent latest Ubuntu 11.04 Install on it.

I was surprised to find out that trying to boot up the Ubuntu 11.04 installer led me to a black screen (black screen of death).

The v Aspire’s 5736Z monitor kept completely blank, where the hard drive was continuously reading (indicating that the Ubuntu installer has properly booted but it couldn’t light up the notebook screen).

A bit of investigation on any issues with this Acer notebook model has led me to a thread in fedora forums:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263794
On this forum the same kind of Linux install problem was described to also occur with ASPIREs 5736Z during a Fedora install.

I just tried the suggested fix and it works like a charm.

The fix goes like this:

1. Invoke the Ubuntu settings parameter Install pre install screen

Just press any button while the Ubuntu installer CD is reading and after few secs the Install options screen should appear, like you see it in below’s screenshot:

Ubuntu Install boot options parameters screen

2. Select the nomodetest Boot CD Ubuntu option

You see in the above screenshot the F6 Other Options . I had toto press F6 and choose the nomodetest boot option to make the Ubuntu be able to further boot up.

After selecting the nomodetest option and pressing on the Install Ubuntu menu option the graphic installer launched succesfully 😉
Hope this small tip to be helpful to some Ubuntu or other Linux user who is trying to install Linux on his Acer Aspire 5736Z
Cheers 😉