3820TG Owner's Lounge - Part Two

Uninstall ati graphic card driver and ati hdmi sound driver
Reinstall

 

Thanks for the response. So if I send it to the repair depot, will they try to fix my current hard drive, replace it with a new OEM one, or replace it with a refurbished one? Also, are there any repair costs if I'm still under the one-year warranty?

 

If it were me I would try reformatting before sending it in. It does happen that hard drives get scrambled for some reason. When you contact Acer they are likely going to ask you to do this first before sending it in amyway. If the reformat fails to fix the problem then you can send it in or fix it yourself. Replacing the hardrives on these is easy and takes about 5 mintues. There is an access panel on the bottom of the machine that you remove (if you google I think you'll find pictures of how to do it). Then the drive just slides out. This would be faster than returning it to Acer but you would be out the cost of the drive. Sometimes manufacturers will cross ship a replacement part llike a hard drive so you might ask Acer about this.

Of course if the drive is toast it might be a good time to upgrade to an SSD if your so inclined. If it were my machine I probably would just pop a new drive in it rather than waiting for it to go to the repair depot. But I am the impatient sort.

 

If you send your unit to the depot, they will test your drive and, if defective, just replace it before sending it back. They don't use refurbished parts for warranty replacement. No charge if under warranty. It takes about two weeks to make the complete circuit.

If you reformat, I would use the procedure to bring the HD back to factory settings.

 

I reformatted the drive (brought it back to factory settings using the eRecovery Tool) and everything appears to be working fine. I ran a ChkDsk, which finished (I think) without any errors; anything other scanning tools I should know of to check if the drive is corrupted?

 

Hey guys,

I know it's bad form to only contribute when I have problems, but it seems that's the position I'm in.

I just updated my AMD drivers, and Catalyst Control Centre to the newest version, and it seemed to all go well.

The problem is that, now when I go into bios, and change my graphics type back to switchable, Windows won't boot, leaving me with a black screen.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling drivers again to no avail. Anyone have a clue as to what I've done wrong?

Thanks!

Dylan

 

By uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, you referring to the Acer driver or the official from AMD?
The default driver from Acer also not working ?

 

I was talking about the AMD official drivers - they seemed to break the graphics switching.

I just uninstalled the catalyst control centre, and it allows me to switch graphics again, but I now have no control over my card settings with the AMD card (ie. there's no software).

Thanks for the quick replies folks!

 

Sorry in advance for the double post - but I think I've solved my driver problems, and successfully OC'd the GPU, but having some trouble OCing the CPU.

I can get the FSB information no problem, and have changed some of the hex values as some of the people on this thread suggested previously, but whenever I click "set FSB" my screen goes crazy, in something similar to static. Anyone ever see this problem? I can't really post a screenshot because the computer is essentially frozen.

Thanks!

 

Crucial M4, OCZ Agility 3 or Intel 320? All 120-128 GB.

 

Stay away from OCZ.

 

firstly I agree with lennong above, OCZ has some reliability issues.

Crucial M4 is Sata III but the 3820tg is Sata II only. They'll both work in your laptop though.

However, based on this: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/356?vs=359 (I compared the two higher capacity versions @ SataII) the Crucial is better/faster in almost every way.

Crucial warranty is 3 years, Intel is 5.

If the crucial is cheaper or the same price, I'd go for that without a doubt. If not, then weigh based on what you need I suppose.

 

You should be able to get the M4 for a lot less than the Intel. My old Crucial M225 has performed flawlessly for the year-and-a-half that I have had it in my 3820TG. I have always preferred Intel SSD's but would buy another Crucual without thinking twice.

 

320 is $18 cheaper than the Crucial M4.

 

Hey everyone quick question.

What's the max safe temperature that my HD 6550 can be running at during gaming? I want this laptop to last me a while so I want to be extremely careful of heat damage.

Thanks

 

If you want safe in terms of lifespan, I would say <95 degrees, although the lower the temperature, the better. Mine never reaches 80 degrees on stock and does about 85 degrees thereabouts at 670/1040. This is with IC Diamond btw, the stock paste is atrocious.

 

I've repasted my 3820tg 7 times now with mx4, diamond, and some dynex brand paste. Temperatures are always the same. 50C idle, 80-85C during long Skyrim sessions, with short peaks at 90C. And mine is clocked at 850/1100. I'm running the gaming fan profile too. Never has it locked up or seen artifacts. I really don't think its going to get any cooler no matter what I do. I think these temperatures are fine. Only thing I don't like is if you exit game suddenly and temp drops drastically, sometimes I hear a cracking sound, like the heatsink/chasis contracting/expanding or something.

 

So when playing Skyrim if the GPU temp is consistently at about 90 degrees, I should be fine?

 

Actually I bet you have a virus/rootkit, im guessing the sst.b rootkit.

Virus caused "Delayed write failed" Windows 7 64 - Forced HD into "Read Only"

Try TDSSKiller

If TDSSKiller won't run (blocked by SST rootkit) - Kaspersky Lab Forum

 

For me, Skyrim tends to make temperatures jump around. I doubt it would just stay at 90. But I wouldnt want it hanging above that for prolong periods of time.

 

That's true. It's closer to 80-85 and jumps up to 90 once in a while.

 

90 degrees is acceptable for me, but maybe that's just because I got >100 with the stock paste

 

Hi!
where can i find the latest hybrid video drivers?

 

leshcat.blogspot.com

 

Thanks for the link!

Another thing: I started to oc my i5 450m, with setpll, and i use 3820tg tray to set the max tdp.

fsb@156 = ~3.3ghz but the turbo only goes up to this freq., when i set the max TDP over 30w.

is this because it can only go up to 3.3ghz, when it takes more than 25w power?

Could somebody give me a brief description about messing this TDP/TDA ?

 

hi guys...been away for a while..
which driver is d best now and can someone provide d link..
thanks so much!!

 

TDP is shortform for Thermal Design Power, which is the maximum amount of cooling the computer requires. A TDP of 25W means that the processor can dissipate 25W of heat without exceeding the TJmax of the processor. With Turbo Boost, the computer can exceed the TDP for a short period of time. By increasing the TDP, you are letting it dissipate more heat and clock itself higher as compared to when the TDP is 25W, presumably because a clock speed of 3.3GHz makes the processor dissipate more than 30W of heat.

 

oh yeah...done testing 11.11 with skyrim..
i can say a bit boost from 11.8..haha
no need to oc my gc can sustain playable frame-rate...
temp also not dat high..barely touch 68c..

 

Thanks!

Here is a strange thing:

Since i disassembled my 3820 to repaste the cpu and the gpu, i noticed that the restart of the machine takes more time. Windows shuts down, the screen goes full black, and then it remains black for almost 5 seconds. After that the reboot happens. What could be the problem?
2 things i can think:

-there is something wrong with the freshly installed win7 (??????)

-I messed up the power-cable (the one that connects the MB to the case power leds, and power button)

Anyone has this problem?

 

Just got my laptop back from Acer's repair people. It was confirmed it was a mainboard failure (thought not why it failed) so they replaced it and also the DC cable on the power supply.

All in all it was a great service; UPS door-to-door and repaired in 5 business days. I think I'll be taking out the extended 3 year warranty from the Acer shop before this warranty expires!

 

It sounded like component failure. I've been happy with Acer depot service in the US. I took the extended warranty for my 3820TG.

 

You could try to disassemble the laptop again and ensure that all the cables are inserted properly, although I'm not sure which cable would cause this problem.

 

I noticed another thing, when i applied pressure on the upper left corner of the palmrest(the intel sticker) the usb connection terminated.

So i took it apart again, but every connection looked okay, i disconnected and reconnected both sides of the usb-mobo ribbon cable, and then connected back everything. Now it looks okay, reboot back to normal again, and no USB disconnect when pressing that exact point of the chassis

MOD: when i reboot the machine, after the screen goes to dark, it stops for 17s, then the reboot process starts..

It's very annoying, because my boot time is less than 17s...

When i shutdown, after the screen goes to dark, less than 1s and the machine is powered off.

 

I have found that the USB board is prone to grounding improperly if the case does not sit perfectly on top of the board at the edges. It will cause the USB board to malfunction like that ... a few screws and an adjustment makes it go away.

I wonder if the computer is having problems POSTing? What video driver are you using? My unit posts in 4 seconds, loads network drivers in 10 seconds and fully boots in 32 seconds (while slow in comparison to current 15 second boot times, it's plenty fast for me). Is there a firmware update for your SSD?

 

I'm using the hybrid VGA drivers, and have a corsair F60. as i can remember, this new "ultra slow reboot" is active since i cleaned out the lappy, and installed a fresh w7. But it is the same w7 HP 64bit, what was installed previously...
BTW i checked and my drive has the original driver (1.0, 2006!!!) so i'm about to update to the latest 2.4 in the minute, i ill post results



EDIT

with the latest FW on my SSD, the reboot still takes an eternity.

The power off, and the power on is working properly. Only problems when i try to reboot. It looks like the windows terminates, and then the machine is waiting for 17-18s , then that little clicking noise, and after that the system starts to boot (now it takes exactly 18s too )

When i disconnected the powerboard-MB ribbon cable, maybe one of the cables inside teared apart. I can only think about this is being the problem

 

Hello
I have problem with my screen. It has some crashes sometimes while moving it both sides (but not always, just rarely). Could it be a driver problem or probably technical damage?

 

Can someone link me to that small (white) AC-adapter for the 3820TG?

Also, is there an original Acer-case/-sleeve available for the 3820TG?

 

In my boundless enthusiasm for doing stupid things, I broke the bulb behind the display.

Does anyone know the bulb model or have some information about getting it repaired - is the bulb going available on ebay or will I have to send it to Acer, essentially.

thanks!

 

You broke the bulb? How did you do that? There isn't any conventional light bulb in a LCD display, those only exist in CRT screens.

 

I don't know what you mean by "conventional" light bulb . . . I know my computer isnt crt based or using incandescent lights but it definitely does use some form of lighting - there has to be an LED or cold cathode somewhere because LCD doesn't just make light on its own.

the screen displays fine, there is just no brightness - external displays work fine and shining a light directly on it reveals the image.

I'm not very computer savvy in the scheme of things and of the two electrical components within the display that I know about (lamp and inverter) I figured it was most likely the lamp that burnt out as the display now has no brightness after I slammed the lid closed.

any ideas?

 

Amazon.com: AcBel Ultra Slimmest & Smallest Laptop AC Adapter for Acer Aspire TimelineX 3820TG 3820T 4820T 4820TG 5820T 5820TG Series NoteBook PCs (Worldwide Safety Certificate with 3 years Warranty) + Free All-in-one Universal Plug Adapter: Electron

 

It could be that you broke the LCD inverter board. You would have to go to Acer for something like this.

 

Are you sure this thing can provide 90W of juice without melting away? (which is what 3820tg needs when in full load and charging at a time)

 

Updated drivers for AHCI, audio, BT, card reader, LAN, touchpad and WLAN. List here

 

Yes. cowithgun is using one with his 3820TG.

 

Nice price. It's a shame that I already have two of the standard 90W power bricks.

 

And just like that, Catalyst 11.12 hybrid and Catalyst 12.1 Preview Hybrid have been released.

Changelog:
Catalyst 11.12:
- Updated ATi Graphic Driver ( Catalyst 11.12 WHQL, ver. 8.920.0.0000 ).
- Included Intel HD Graphics ( ver. 8.15.10.2559 ).
- Updated optional ATi HDMI driver ( ver. 7.12.0.7704 ).

Catalyst 12.1:
- This release contains AVIVO, Hydravision etc taken from 11.12 WHQL.
- Updated ATi Graphic Driver ( Catalyst 12.1 Preview, ver. 8.930.10.0000 ).
- Included Intel HD Graphics ( ver. 8.15.10.2559 ).
- Updated optional ATi HDMI driver ( ver. 7.12.0.7704 ).

Download - Catalyst 11.12 hybrid (stability over performance)
Download - Catalyst 12.1 Preview hybrid (performance over stability)

 

I'm having problem running Leshcat's drivers with 3820tray. Anyone else?

I want to be on the Intel HD-graphics all the time, except when playing games and watching HD-movies I want to switch to the ATI-graphics. It works when doing so manually, but not by making profiles and not allowing autoswitching.

 

Are you having this problem with Leshcat's drivers only? Do you have a full version of Tray?

 

I haven't use 3820tray before so I can't really help. Since manual is working fine, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to set hotkeys to switch in CCC. I prefer the manual control of ATI switchable than Optimus, but that's personal preference