513L3TT3

My dad gave me an acer aspire 3000 he got fed up with trying to get it to run right. I took it to best buy and had the geek squad look at it. They wiped everything out but they didnt have the recovery disks at the time so i had to order them and do the rest myself. I followed the directions to reinstall the operating system and start over but when I did it the laptop didnt seem to be any better in fact it seemed worse. It kept freezing up at the screen where you have to name the computer and set the time zone and all that fun stuff. So i would wipe it out again and start all over. Sometimes it will take me several times to finally get everything to run right. Then when I shut the computer off for the night I tried to turn it back on and everything seemed to be ok untill the check disk screen came up. When i tried to cancel the check disk i couldnt get any of the keys to work to cancel it, my mouse didnt work nothing. When i let the scan disk run it freezes at 20 percent and I have to reformat it again. After a while i can get the computer to run right and I can finally use it but then im afraid to turn it off again. I dont know whats going on but whatever it is is really annoying. Hopefully someone can help me Acer cant seem to tell me what to do and I dont have another 200 dollars to take it to geek squad again.

dai

download and run the hard drive makers diognostic utility on the hard drive

ND4SPD

what Operating System are u currently running? eg. Vista, XP?

513L3TT3

I have windows XP. Where would I find the diagnostic utility?

dai

on the drive makers download page

Techie19

Hey there 513L3TT3, as "dai" recommended above check your hard drive because it most likely is the hard drive the culprit. If you turn the laptop upside down and remove the hard drive cover, you can see what the make up the hard drive is, (ex:western digital, seagate, toshiba, etc...) Once you know the make, go to their website, and download their diagnostic utility. Run it to see what the issue is if any.

Ways that you can tell that the hard drive is no failing is if the drive is making funny noises, like scratching loudly. From your symptoms it sounds like it is your hard drive.

Post your findings...

Techie19

Another hard drive diagnostic utility you can use is called Activesmart. You can run this program and it will tell you the status of your drive.

You can download it from, http://www.ariolic.com/download.html

Techie19

If you click on the following link, it will take you to where you can download the manual for any acer computer. Once on the site, selct computer type (notebook), and model (aspire 3000), then press search. When the results come up, click on the first item: Aspire 3000 / 5000 User's Guide, then when it comes up look at page 13. It will show you the view of the underside of the notebook and tells you exactly where the hard drive is.

http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/for...0%26%20Manuals

Hope this helps.

513L3TT3

Well unfortunatly I went to the Hitachi wesite and found the diagnostic utility but when i read further it said that it will not work with the Travelstar HD for whatever reason. I ended up actually sitting on the computer for about 5 hours and i updated my windows to SP2 (dont know why it wasnt on there to begin with) but the probelm seems to be solved thank god.

I did acquire another hard drive today i believe it is a 80 gig (mine is just a 50) I had a friend help me put it in to see if it would work (it is the same brand as the one I have now but it came out of a gateway) and it didnt work something about the computer cant find the HD....I dont know but looks like thats my new project for a rainy day.

Thanks to everyone that helped. You might be hearing for me again hpefully not too soon though!

513L3TT3

Actually I do have one more question, Is there another way that I can transfer files from my old laptop to this one now that I have it working. The old laptop is an ancient IBM thinkpad with a busted screen so i cant see anything unless i hook it up to a monitor. and it doesnt have a serial port to hook the 2 together. Can i transfer things through a USB port possibly. Nothing big just a few pictures and small text docs.

dai

http://www.infopackets.com/channels/...en_laptops.htm
check the jumpers are correct on the hard drives