Possible motherboard issue on Acer Laptop

[jbrid]

Hello-

I am trying to fix my friend's Acer Aspire 4710Z laptop. She was complaining about its strange behavior. To eliminate the OS as a possibility, I installed XP to replace Vista. The install was successful but the same strange behavior persists. Here is what is happening:

- CDROM, Ethernet Adapter, and Wireless Adapter will drop sporadically. These devices will stop working and will not appear in the Device Manager listing. All three (and possibly others) drop at the same time

- After the aforementioned devices drop, the Found New Hardware Wizard will pop up saying that it found the PCI Device. I try to install it and it fails. Sometimes the Wizards finds the Ethernet Adapter as well. I certainly installed the PCI Device driver and Ethernet driver successfully after the XP installation.

- Computer freezes for several minutes or more sometimes forcing a hard boot

- At times the BIOS cannot recognize the CDROM device either. It will take a long pause during the boot process but the CDROM light will not light up.

Once again, these same symptoms were seen on both XP and Vista. Anybody got any ideas? I suspect the motherboard but don't know how to prove or disprove that hypothesis.

Thanks!

[eBait]

Hmm, have you tried flashing the most recent BIOS version to eliminate old errors that might have fixed in the BIOS?

[jbrid]

Hmm, have you tried flashing the most recent BIOS version to eliminate old errors that might have fixed in the BIOS?

Hmmm....sounds interesting. Can you give me some additional information about that process like what it does and how to do it? Thx

[JunkInternetMail]

Most PCs, including laptops, divide hardware into 2 "bridges" called the north and south bridge -- at least for intel based machines.

These bridges will host specific hardware functions and can die independently.

This would easily explain your friend's problem and the laptop should be returned immediately if under warranty.

If say the south bridge hosts CD-ROM, ethernet, and wireless, and it's faulty, then the devices will come and go based on stress of the mobo.

{RANT TO FOLLOW}

Also, I know it's not your laptop and this doesn't help anything but...Acer makes shitty products and their tech support is worse than any other manufacturer in history.

In fact, companies frequently sell people extended warranties which Acer honors after hours of tech support failures and arguments on the phone.

Acer also requires you pay for shipping back to them to fix their junk machines which never work right in the first place.

To make matters worse, emachines was bought by Gateway, and now Acer is buying Gateway. What a cluster fuck of 3 really bad companies!

Look on the bright side though, emachines has relatively good customer service, gateway now makes a much better product, but Acer is still well, Acer.

I fix people's machines and work with them daily; all of my clients for laptops choose MACs, Toshibas, HPs, or Sonys.

{ADVICE}

In the future, learn how to dual boot those machines for a few reaons:

1) You give your friend the choice to grow into Vista or even just play with it when he/she wants.

2) You don't run the risk of voiding the warranty.

3) Vista cannot usually be restored without restore discs and this sometimes then fails to activate again later on.

4) Removing the XP partition is simple when you need/want to send it in for repair.

5) You learn a new skill (if you don't already know how to dual boot) which can be invaluable for data recovery and/or party tricks.

[jbrid]

Thanks a lot for all the information. I really appreciate that. My friend and I are both volunteers here in West Africa, so returning the PC is not an option. That's why I am trying so hard to resolve her problems. She relies on her computer for her job. Fortunately,　I have a Dell and I am running smooth.:P

I have dual booted several times but only with Windows and Linux. I have read about some complications when you dual boot Vista and XP so I didn't want to try it.

Have a nice day.

[JunkInternetMail]

Dual booting XP and Vista is easy and complication free.

A quick guide:

1) Install Acronis Disk Director on a working Windows PC.

2) Make an Acronis Boot Disk.

3) Boot using the Acronis Boot Disk.

1a) If you have XP installed:

1b) Create a primary partition for Vista from free space - 20GB (minimum recommended).

1c) Set the Vista partition active

1d) Boot using the Vista DVD

1e) Install Vista onto your newly created; primary/active 20GB partition.

1f) Boot into Vista after installation

1g) In Vista you should see your XP drive. Unhide hidden folders and copy these files from XP to Vista: boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect

1h) While in VistaBootPRO: Manage OS entries-add windows legacy for xp-drive letter c: Bootloader-Click Apply at "Reinstall the Vista bootloader"

1i) Reboot and now you should see a boot menu; Pick Vista or arrow down and pick XP (Older version of Windows).

2a) If you have Vista installed:

2b) Create a primary partition for XP from free space - 15GB (minimum recommended).

2c) Set the XP partition active.

2d) Boot using the XP CD

2e) Install XP onto your newly created; primary/active 15GB partition.

2f) Reboot using Vista DVD

2g) During set up process, pick REPAIR INSTALLATION.

2h) Vista should now boot, install VISTABOOT PRO

2i) Follow this guide: http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/about88231.html

2j) Reboot and now you should see a boot menu; pick Vista or arrown down and pick XP (Older version of windows).

[Chappy]

Most PCs, including laptops, divide hardware into 2 "bridges" called the north and south bridge -- at least for intel based machines.

These bridges will host specific hardware functions and can die independently.

This would easily explain your friend's problem and the laptop should be returned immediately if under warranty.

If say the south bridge hosts CD-ROM, ethernet, and wireless, and it's faulty, then the devices will come and go based on stress of the mobo.

Precisely...this sounds exactly like a failing chipset, probably the Southbridge. Possible overheating as well could cause the chipset to lose functions erratically and especially in a notebook. If you know of anyone who knows how to get into a laptop case, have them clean this out for you also. I've also seen failing Power Supplies cause very erratic behavior that can mimic other hardware failures...that's a tough one to diagnose as folks usually ignore the PSU until they've swapped out everything else to no avail.

This sounds like it would be best taken into a shop that can bench test the hardware and MoBo.