Cousin told me he picked one of these up, said it was a small Acer, came pre-loaded with Vista Business and was running really slowly. I had him check how much memory it came with...512mb! Holy...
So I told him to go get some new ram. He read off the specs on the side of the box, said DDR2 533mhz, so pointed him in the direction of Fry's for the $75 Patriot deal. Decided to meet him there just to walk him through it. Service counter, phone number, printout, checkout, no problem.
On the way out I ask him if he's ever installed ram before, he said no. I offered to come over and walk him through it. Should have just sent him on his way.
Get over by his monitor, which is on, and I'm looking under the desk for the computer...he says that's it right there...this tiny box that looks like a NAS or something. Wasn't expecting that. I knew right off the bat the ram wasn't going to fit, opened her up anyway to check it out. Yup, needed SO-DIMMs. I showed him how to remove the memory, place it in, all that, and had him put it back together so when he got the right memory he could do it himself. Everything was fine, booted up (albeit slowly) and I'm just about to walk out the door when I hear "hey, the DVD drive isn't working." I check out Explorer and it's got a red circle with a line through it over the DVD symbol, ala Ghostbusters.
2 more hours, numerous re-builds, re-installing drivers, all to no avail. I just put it back together, said "I gotta go." "Is it working?" I just shrugged and said "my wife's expecting me. Thanks for the beer!"
Did a little research, and it looks like a common problem for Acer machines. Bastards. I'm gonna head over there tomorrow and check out if this advice helps:
http://forums.microsoft.com/Te...stID=1515662&SiteID=17
Just thought I'd share.
-z
So I told him to go get some new ram. He read off the specs on the side of the box, said DDR2 533mhz, so pointed him in the direction of Fry's for the $75 Patriot deal. Decided to meet him there just to walk him through it. Service counter, phone number, printout, checkout, no problem.
On the way out I ask him if he's ever installed ram before, he said no. I offered to come over and walk him through it. Should have just sent him on his way.
Get over by his monitor, which is on, and I'm looking under the desk for the computer...he says that's it right there...this tiny box that looks like a NAS or something. Wasn't expecting that. I knew right off the bat the ram wasn't going to fit, opened her up anyway to check it out. Yup, needed SO-DIMMs. I showed him how to remove the memory, place it in, all that, and had him put it back together so when he got the right memory he could do it himself. Everything was fine, booted up (albeit slowly) and I'm just about to walk out the door when I hear "hey, the DVD drive isn't working." I check out Explorer and it's got a red circle with a line through it over the DVD symbol, ala Ghostbusters.
2 more hours, numerous re-builds, re-installing drivers, all to no avail. I just put it back together, said "I gotta go." "Is it working?" I just shrugged and said "my wife's expecting me. Thanks for the beer!"
Did a little research, and it looks like a common problem for Acer machines. Bastards. I'm gonna head over there tomorrow and check out if this advice helps:
http://forums.microsoft.com/Te...stID=1515662&SiteID=17
Just thought I'd share.
-z
