Acer Aspire 5050 Problems

[thebeezer]

Ladies and gentlemen,

My laptop has been out of use for the past while. Upon startup 90% of the time it says 'operating system could not be found.' The other 10% it would auto-shutdown before reaching Windows etc. On the 2% of occasions when we reached Windows, it would go massively jittery, to the point that its almost impossible to use. Even at that point, a blue screen of death would appear quite frequently and the laptop would shutdown again.

Recently my (more knowledgeable than I am about computers) cousin formatted my laptop for me, but installed an old version of Windows XP which is seemingly incompatible with the 5050 drivers. Further, the computer was still shutdown by itself a few times when in Windows.

Now, when attempting to install a more appropriate version of XP, the laptop is again not getting past the very first screen when the machine is turned on, giving the 'no operating system could be found' error message again.

Do any of you have any idea how to proceed from here? Is there any way around this problem except splashing out on a new hard drive or even a new laptop?

Any help greatly appreciated.

[bigspin]

Format the HDD & reinstall Windows.It will solve your problem.

[WabbaJ]

Also, unplug things like external mice, printers, etc.

And, take out the battery. Sometimes a bad battery will cause random hang-ups.

[bigspin]

Maybe you accidentally change the BIOS setting. Try to reset it back to default values .

[bigozone]

in your situation.. i would download and run MEMTEST

your problems seem like they could be caused by some glitchy RAM..
if using BIOS defaults like bigspin suggests doesn't help.. then try downloading and burning the self booting ISO of MEMTEST

boot up from the CD and let the program run for a few hours (if it will)
if it won't boot... then you definatly have some kind of hardware issue

[Siberian]

Did you add any additional ram ?

If you try to run 3rd party ram in conjunction with the ram that is already in the unit, you can sometimes run into memory compatibility issues. Neither is really defective, they just don't like eachother so to speak.

If you did upgrade the ram, try to use the unit with either the Acer ram or the 3rd party ram, but not both.

If you find it solves your issue, either purchase the Acer certifed ram (which is like 3 times the price of standard ram) or replace the Acer ram all together with 3rd party ram, which is still cheaper then buying the certified ram.

Your no OS found issue sounds like your hard drive is having an issue, maybe your boot order has changed ? check your bios for boot order, and set it for CD/DVD then Hard disk. Check hard disk boot order, if you installed a USB stick it may have put itself as the 1st hard disk in the list, and since it isn't bootable you get this message.

good luck.