5102 is having major problems

My 5102 will run ok when I do a fresh install of an OS. I have used both clean xp pro install and acer recovery disk for MCE. After a little while it will get VERY slow, and when I turn it on, it often goes to chkdsk. Thing is, I have changed HDD 3 times already, and it still does it. One HDD I had it goes ok for a while, but it still ended up doing this. I also messed around with my ram. I have 2 1 gb sticks in it, and tried every possible configuration in it and no matter what it wouldn't produce errors on memtest. This leads me to believe it has to be a problem with my motherboard. Is this something that would be fixable by a laptop repair place, or should I just cut my losses and sell it on ebay as is, or part it out? I would really appreciate any help, as this has been extremely frustrating.

 

i had a similar problem. but that was due to bad sectors in hdd and was solved when i replaced the hdd. to see whether its caused by bad sectors do the following.

1. download hwinfo32 from http://www.hwinfo.com/
2. install and run it
3. in left pane go to Drives>>(S)ATA/ATAPI Drives>>(your hdd name)
4. now in right pane scroll down to category called 'self monitoring analysing and reporting technology' (SMART)
5. check whether all entries have the green ok icon before it. pay special attention to 'reallocated sector count'

well if this value is in error. then your hard drive is the culprit. since you have changed it many times. maybe theres some pattern of usage that causes this problem (like frequent drops or turn off without shutting down etc)

 

I will try that, thanks. Another thing it does sometimes when I boot is get stuck on a black screen and say media test failue, check cable, then it goes on to say exiting pxe rom, but when I reboot it works like normal except extremely slow.

 

I ran that program, and everything checked out ok. I really don't know what to do with this.

 

in my opinion your system is showing every symptom of hdd bad sectors. systems having huge number of hdd bad sectors do become incredibly slow and show such messages in bios like 'hdd smart failed' . 'hdd status bad etc.'

however as you have pointed out this maybe the problem with motherboard. before you do that scan for bad sectors on the drive using 'chkdsk' utility to
be double sure

1. in run type cmd
2. type chkdsk c:/r

repeat the procedure for all drives. notice the log that comes back at the end to see whether there are bad sectors. or run hwinfo32 after the check and look for reallocated sector count. if it still shows no error consider a motherboard change

 

hi,

i think your motherboard is defective.
The boot failure points to this explanation too.
Repair and sell it.


kind regards

 

This is a classic failure of some 5100's; the southbridge chip has a tendancy to fail, especially so on the models without the x1300 graphics chip. The only fix is to have the mainboard changed, also a "fixed disk 0 failure" error is likely to occur.

 

I have to agree with the post above. This is a well documented problem with that model.