3820TG Owner's Lounge - Part Two

[prikolchik]

As I mentioned in the last topic I have a small harddrive problem so it seems. At seemingly random moments the harddrive led lights up, you can hear the drive spinning and it keeps lit for 30 seconds or more during which my laptop freezes. It is really annoying the hell out of me. I tryed using resource monitor in windows but it isn't really always giving usefull information..

At the moment I think it might have something to do with:
-Firefox 4.0 (session restore)
-VLC
-Windows

Can anyone help me with this?

Could a SSD be a possbile solution to a broken HDD?

[Maurik]

Nice to have the new, clean thread!

When I'm running SIW, my HD6550 shows up as a HD5650, is it the same for everyone else?

Is this just a SIW bug?

[Icyzer]

I can't find any evidence of a failing hdd, diskcheckup gives an all oke. HDTune does too, atleast the errorscan does (the health subtab isn't working atm).

I have included some pictures here of the windows resource monitor on the moment of a crash:
http://i53.tinypic.com/wcful2.png
http://i52.tinypic.com/okzd07.png

[poisonsnak]

Back in January when I got this laptop I followed the easy guide here

Acer TimelineX 3820TG Owners Lounge. Info, benchmarks, tweaks, mods and upgrades

to update the 5650's driver to catalyst 10.12 with no problems.

Now having done a fresh install of Win7 on an SSD I tried the same technique with catalyst 11.2 and no luck (got a BSOD BAD_POOL_CALLER and then when I tried again "driver is not intended for this platform"). I then tried the technique with catalyst 10.12 and it worked perfectly just as it did in January.

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but I just thought I would post my findings. Hopefully it's fixed again in 11.3

EDIT:
Actually with 10.12 I just tried to switch back to switchable mode for the first time and got a black screen. I guess I must have screwed something up when installing, I'll probably reinstall Win7 and try again and post results.

EDIT 2:
Reinstalled 7 and followed the guide again. When you first boot up in discrete mode I noticed the display was low-resolution so I allowed one more reboot just to be safe.

I can confirm everything is working properly including both discrete and switchable mode, and switching with the desktop context menu as well as the P-key on battery.

I'm not sure what my mistake was, but once I got the BSOD I'm assuming the driver was left in a half-installed state and neither usable nor removable (tried many times to uninstall with no luck). I think I either tried installing the latest catalyst driver while still in switchable mode or tried installing the latest catalyst driver before installing the acer/ati combined driver.

[geokilla]

Now that there is a 3820TG keyboard, I recommend that one. I have this one in mine ATM. New Acer Aspire 3820T 3820TG 4820T 4820TG Keyboard - eBay (item 110660057437 end time Apr-09-11 15:55:01 PDT) It's not shinny at all. The keys have a matt finish.

@charlesjean - three hours sounds just about right for a discharging a battery when the unit is on the dedicated GPU. Although I haven't used it for switching yet, 3820TGTray looks like it will give you some control over the GPU. You sould be able to get back your 5 hours on the Intel IGPU.

Bronsky

$52 for a keyboard... I'll use my cheap $10 keyboard lol >.<. As much as I hate it, I can't justify spending $52.

And I'm able to get around 5 to 6 hours on switchable graphics.

I did the BIOS trick and whooooo what a difference! Jumped from 3 hours fully charged to 8 hours... (estimated) ... but never saw this number before. So I should get a good 5-6 hours intensive web surf. Now the right fan is barely working and no more hot air coming out from the vent.

What BIOS trick? I'm still waiting for a forum member here to write a mini-guide on how to flash the BIOS. I do not wish to flash in Windows and flashing in DOS didn't work for me. Couldn't read the file or something.

Edit: Toshiba Alps driver isn't installing for me. UAC launches then nothing happens.

[PeterDLai]

$52 for a keyboard... I'll use my cheap $10 keyboard lol >.<. As much as I hate it, I can't justify spending $52.

Not sure what you're looking at, but I see it for $30 shipped (except for Pittsburgh 6% tax).

[chroma_cg]

hi, have been a fan of the timeline series with my 11inch 1810t, just bought a 3820TG with ati5470 so i can do some light gaming

my major concern is the inability to update the intel HD graphics driver so i can install win7 sp1, and more importantly not make windows live and other D2D applications crash. sure, i can avoid it by using discrete graphics all the time but i think that totally defeats the purpose of the timeline's long battery life

is there i way i can manually update BOTH graphics drivers with the ones directly from amd and intel, and still maintain a switchable graphics mode? thanks

[mdott]

Not sure what you're looking at, but I see it for $30 shipped (except for Pittsburgh 6% tax).

Yeah I was going to say the same thing. I was thinking about canadian conversion, but even then it's cheaper/the same (yeah, take that greenback).

is there i way i can manually update BOTH graphics drivers with the ones directly from amd and intel, and still maintain a switchable graphics mode? thanks

Did you install Acer's AMD Drivers? That should update both drivers for you? at least that's the impression I've been under.


Also, what are the advantages, if any, of doing the non-acer ATi drivers? Currently I just have the 5470 driver from acer's website. Is there an actual advantage to the non-acer method (separate drivers, bios switching, etc.)?

[geokilla]

Not sure what you're looking at, but I see it for $30 shipped (except for Pittsburgh 6% tax).

US Keyboard for Acer Aspire 3810 3810T 4810 4810T Black on eBay.ca (item 330525460288 end time 02-Feb-11 21:32:42 EST)

[chroma_cg]

Did you install Acer's AMD Drivers? That should update both drivers for you? at least that's the impression I've been under.


Also, what are the advantages, if any, of doing the non-acer ATi drivers? Currently I just have the 5470 driver from acer's website. Is there an actual advantage to the non-acer method (separate drivers, bios switching, etc.)?

the acer's amd drivers contains both the ati and intel drivers together

personally, i do not require the newest and best drivers for the dedicated card, but the intel drivers - for certain versions at least - causes problems in windows 7 if it's run under switchable graphics mode. most noticably, the latest windows live applications (mail, messenger) and other d2d applications will fail or have issues. moreover, windows update wont allow you to download and install service pack 1 if you have the questionable intel drivers installed

this problem can be fixed if the newest intel drivers are installed, but we are at the mercy of acer for releasing a more up-to-date driver in order to fix it, because of the way the graphics drivers are packaged (the amd driver from acer also contains the intel drivers, but with the questionable versions unfortunately)

given this situation, i would rather be able to install non-acer drivers even for the future. even if amd/intel releases drivers what will fix critical issues such as this one, we still have to wait for acer to release it for your laptop

as an aside, i bought a lenovo ideapad y560 for my parents last year, also has switchable graphics, also cannot download and install windows 7 sp1. lenovo has not since released a driver package that will fix it (latest version is oct 2010). so if history repeats itself so to speak, i kinda dont want to wait for acer forever to update the driver package......if they ever choose to do so, that is

sorry for the long post