Acer 1501LCe nightmare...

Hey all. Bit odd posting this now seeing how my laptop is (still) out of my hands and so any possible solution would be..well...useless. But I figure it's best to be pre-armed with some useful info for next time I'm in contact with Acer UK.

So here's the problem...as brief as I can make it.

Every 2:30 - 3:00 without fail any audio playing through the laptop will suffer a 10-15 millisecond dropout. This happens using the onboard sound. It also happens using an external Firewire audio interface, over both the intergrated 1394 port, and a Texas Instruments chipset Pyro DV PCMCIA 1394 interface. No matter how many times I re-install, or how many factory restores I do, or which devices I disable in device manager, or which drivers I use (i.e. all the latest ones), or how many background processes I terminate....

.....the problem persists. Some may say it's a small problem, but considering I could probably find you a beat up old PC from 5 years ago that can at least play a sound file start to finish without dropping out....then this is unacceptable for the specs, and for the price. More to the point, I'm going to be using it for sequencing and recording (hence the Firewire audio interface) so you can imagine how frustrating it is, recording a guitar part, or just jamming without recording (which rules out HD problems), and every 2:30 to 3:00, the sound just trips up over itself for a split second. The same sort of pause you'd get if...say you were playing an audio file, then closed or launched an app that's being mapped to the soundcard drivers. It's that sort of glitch.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Has anyone found a solution or had it fixed by Acer UK?

As it is the laptop is with Acer UK (now for 2 weeks). I've sold my desktop machine (which was the same spec as the laptop, only 32-bit not 64, and 1gig DDR instead of 512) so now I'm without a means of recording music, and Acer are being about as useful as a chocolate teapot, giving me varying estimated times of repair, out of stock of spares, etc. etc.

But assuming I had the laptop still, what would you all suggest? What does this sound like to you?

I'm pretty sure I've tried EVERYTHING short of becoming a certified Acer laptop technician....but I'm still open to ideas.

- Paul O

www.soundclick.com/chimpspanner

http://chimpspanner.heavenlymediaservices.com

 

No ideas then? I don't know if that's good or bad...

www.soundclick.com/chimpspanner

http://chimpspanner.heavenlymediaservices.com

 

Well, I don't know if this will apply to you, but you may want to try upgrading the video drivers. I had a sound problem playing video files on my desktop. Didn't matter what kind of video file, MPG, DVD, DivX, etc... it would always start cutting in an out and the video would also be jerky. I had a P4 2Ghz CPU and an ATI Radeon card, Creative Live sound card on a 7200rpm HDD with lost of space running XP Pro. So spec wise it was fine. After upgrading the sound drivers and media player with no luck, I tried updated video drivers and it did the trick. This is off the wall for your case since it's just audio, but heck, might as well give it a try.

-Vb-

 

Hey man, thanks for replying.

Well........the/a laptop arrived today (I'm at work so my parents are testing it) and from what I can tell....it's doing the same thing. A glitch once at 2:20ish, and again at around 5:00 or so. I'm so unbelievably livered. Yes it's a relatively small problem...but for a modern day (supposedly) multimedia capable laptop, with these specs, and an £800+ price tag, I don't think it's entirely unreasonble to expect it to play a sound file from start to finish with no cutouts, no glitches. As I said, this is vital to me because I will be using it for audio sequencing and recording, but even if I wasn't, it would still p**s me off if all I was doing was listening to MP3's.

Anyway with regards to your reply, I had a look at the ATI website and they said they don't handle driver updates for intergrated graphics solutions (such as the Mobility Radeon 9600 in my laptop). So as far as I know the drivers I'm using are the most recent, and only ones available.

I'm so mad right now. I don't know who to email first. I'm inclined to go off on one at VIA, cos I have a sneaking suspicion this is a general flaw in their chipset for the K8T800 notebook mobo.

I guess what I really wanna know is, *is anyone else using the Aspire 1501LCe WITHOUT the problem I have described?*



So mad...so...so mad.

www.soundclick.com/chimpspanner

http://chimpspanner.heavenlymediaservices.com

 

Did they give you a list of things they replaced/repaired? Another thing that I can think of that may cause a problem like this may be the HDD. I know on older drives it does a Thermal Recalibration which causes the HDD to pause for a brief second or so. This may be a similar issue. I don't know if it's the cause or not, but if the HDD is not providing the continuous flow of data, you'll have a break. Too bad you just can't try a drive and return it if it doesn't fix the problem.

Regarding the display drivers, you can download the regular drivers for a matching chipset. This should be a 9600 I think. You could get the 9600 drivers, run the .EXE file downloaded and then cancel out of the install (or it will cancel for you). Then, you would manually install the drivers by going into the device manager and update the driver for your video card, point it t o the ATI folder created in your HDD (will have to go to the last subfolder) and install. It'll give you an error, just ignore and restart when done. It should work fine. I did this on my HP NX7000 and it worked great, graphics were faster overall when playing my games. Again, I can't guarantee that this will work or fix the sound problem, so think carefully before tryihng, worst case, you may have to reload
the OS if it doesn't work.

Finally, an OS reload from scratch may also fix the problem with the sound. If there's something loaded that causes your delay, either driver wise or software, an OS reload may be the fix.

I hope it's an easy fix.

Good luck!

-Vb-

 

Hey man. Thanks for the reply...again! Was startin to feel a little alone with this problem lol

Well, now that you've mentioned HDD Thermal Recalibration, I did some research and it does seem at first to fit the description - one site I went to mentioned that some older drive may recalibrate even when they don't need to at regular intervals (5 minutes for the first 25 minutes of being powered up, 25 minute intervals after that).

However....I can't get the HDD's from either of the IBM Thinkpads in the house to work in the Acer, and likewise, I can't get the Toshiba MK4025GAS from the Acer to work in either of the Thinkpads, so there's no real way for me to tell.

Aaand....the dropouts are always 2:30ish from the start of the audio file. If I play a file, let a dropout occur, wait 30 seconds, then play it again, it will happen after the same amount of time.

In all fairness to the vendor (Acernotebooks.co.uk) they've been very helpful and communicative so far, even though Acer UK the manufacturers, are "moving offices"....talk about great timing.

They've said that if I send it back a second time, they'll just send a completely new laptop out (but the same model). If I get the same problem after that...it's a design flaw or something, and I shall demand a refund and TRY to find another machine that matches my desktop machine...for £800...not likely

www.soundclick.com/chimpspanner

http://chimpspanner.heavenlymediaservices.com

 

Here's some other things to try.

1. Play the files through memory. Either change the settings so that it buffers the entire file before playing or create a ram drive large enough for the audio file in XP (you can download software to do this). Once created, copy the entire file to the ram drive and try playing the file from the ram drive. If it pauses again, it has nothing to do with the HDD (one possible cause eliminated). Therefore it's something else causing the problem.

2. Try not restoring the OS using the Restore CD's, there may be something in them that may be the cause. Install from a stand-alone XP CD and then install just the sound drivers and nothing else and see if the problem continues. If no, then it's a driver/OS/software problem and not hardware. Re-install the drivers/software one at a time and repeat play process to see if it still works. This should give you your culprit.

3. Try using a different player to play the audio files. Could be the program itself causing the problem.

Other than the above tests, if the problem still persists, and you know the audio files are good, then the problem is with the hardware or the drivers. Either one is not fixable by you and therefore the manufacturer needs to fix it.

If the problem happens again after the system replacement, I would definitely try to get a refund.

Good Luck!

-Vb-

 

Hi again!

Well thanks for the suggestions Venom.

My dad managed to get the IBM HDD working in the Acer...at 3:45am...and it didn't fix the problem :- so I skipped the Ramdrive option (although that was a great idea, thanks!) cos I know the IBM HDD plays files back no problems in the Thinkpad, so it's definitely not a hard disk problem.

I've tried numerous re-installs of my own, in addition to the factory restore CD's. I even tried rolling back to Win2000 but that didn't help any.

The problem happens whether I'm using Media Player, or monitoring through Nuendo 2 (my audio sequencer).

I'm gunna send it back one more time, get a replacement, and if it still does it, get a refund. Which is a shame cos I really really like this laptop!!

Thanks alot for your suggestions though - would ya believe out of the thousands of pages and millions of people on the net, you're like the only one that's been able to offer some things to try lol

- Paul



www.soundclick.com/chimpspanner

http://chimpspanner.heavenlymediaservices.com

 

You're welcome Paul. I know what it's like to have problems with my computer and not be able to get any help. I just wish one of my suggestions actually fixed the problem. [V] If after getting a replacement unit and the problem persists, see if they can "give" you a different model to test. Some manufacturers are sympathetic to non-resolvable issues and to keep the customer happy, may go that extra mile. See if they're willing to give it a try for a 2 week test or something. Won't hurt to ask at this point.

I've checked out the specs for your model from the Acer Site and it indicates it's an AMD64 CPU, maybe you can try it in an Intel based unit (as a test). The 1620 Series seems to be a comparable Intel model.

Good Luck!

-Vb-

 

Yeah, I posted up on the AMD forum (cos I thought it might be some random 64bit issue) and someone else had a similar situation...well actually I think they had the same problem, but had their laptop in for repair for like a month, so in the end they just sent him a Ferrari 3200 to keep him happy!

THanks for all your suggestions anyway. I will post back here when I've got some sort of solution - whether it be a replacement of the same model, or something completely different. I'm fairly confident that all I need is a brand new 1501LCe, cos there have to be loooads of people out there using this laptop and so far I've found 2, 3 people at the most who have experienced my problem. So, here's hoping.

Cheers again though! I@ll also check out that Intel based machine you mentioned!!

Paul O

www.soundclick.com/chimpspanner

http://chimpspanner.heavenlymediaservices.com