Acer 8943g Owners Lounge

I am new here....I have had my 8930g for 2 years now and I love it....but have encountered a problem.....\i had some difficulty last night getting it to come out of sleep...but managed to get it going after shutting it down......restarted fine....decided to turn it off when I went to bed....this morning after pressing the start button and getting the starting windows screen I got the following message:

"checking file system on c:
type of file is NTFS
volume label is ACER
one of your disks needs to be checked for consistency
you may cancel, but it is strongly recommended to continue
to skip press any key"
then it counts down the seconds and if I press any key nothing happens but a blank screen
if I leave it, it stalls at 1 second.....is my c: drive toast?
I cannot even get to where I can boot it in safe mode after pressing F2, there is no option for that...
I have tried turning it off and starting again and keep getting to this point....
any thoughts...ideas?
thanks so much in advance.....

 

Might want to post in the 8930G owners lounge.

8930 and 8943 are both quite different.

 

ooops...thought i had....re-posted over there...

 

I just got the 8943G-5636, but it doesn't come with bluetooth. How do the higher-up models of the 8943g come provisioned? Can I upgrade this internally? I'd rather not take up a USB port with a dongle if I don't need to.

 

Yes they dont bother making another motherboard without the bluetooth connector. The connector will be on your board.

There is a seller on ebay US selling them for £13 including the cable you need.

You will need to dissassemble the machine quite a bit if its anything like mine however.

 

I currently slip my Acer 8943g into a Samsonite III attache case; its a perfect fit. But it takes time to pack it right. And it does not have a shoulder strap or wheels; very tough in a an airport to maneuver around in...

Does anyone have any ideas on a laptop case or other suitable wheeled case to carry the beast around in?

I'm looking into getting a PELICAN 1495 CC#1 Deluxe Computer Case: Amazon.com: PELICAN 1495 CC#1 Deluxe Computer Case: Electronics

If anyone has a pelican laptop case, please contact me and let me know how its working out for you. They are very expensive, and any thoughts would be appreciated..

 

This is what I came across, do I need to do a teardown to find out if it's the same connector?

2.1 Bluetooth Module + cable Acer aspire 8935g as8935g on eBay.ca (item 140477312588 end time 10-Jan-11 19:42:06 EST)

However, looking at the 8943g service manual, they quote a number of Foxconn modules, BCM2070, BCM2046 and AR3011. Ebay search returns standalone cards like the one above, and combo wifi/bluetooth full height pci cards. Am I still just looking for the standalone one?

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/acer-2-1-Blue...526?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20b5138006

 

*facepalm* Of course, searching with the model name makes too much sense! Haha, thanks for the link, I'll order it. After dealing with iphones, taking this thing apart is gonna be a breeze.

Vertex 2 and HDD bay cover are on their way. I almost jumped on a i7 740QM, but I'll tough it out with the i3 for now. Really tempted to swap out the keyboard for a US version.. who needs to know how to say Esc, Delete, and Caps Lock in French anyway.

Also the 1st dead pixel just came up...

 

I have the 8943g upgraded from an 8920g last month, love it so far apart from when i hooked it up to my tv and i had a border all round the screen. Never had a problem with my old acer and everything else is fine in 1080p on my tv.

 

I may order this, this week. It looks great on paper, but I'd like to hear from people who actually own one.....

Thx!

 

Drawbacks:
Screen is great, but only when viewed from fairly narrow angles.
The fan is on all the time and is quite noisy.
It takes a noticable amount of time for the hard drive to kick in.
The touchpad is erratic.
I don't know if the wireless card has been sorted out, but I ended up replacing mine with an Intel card.

I used to have an Acer 9920 - a huge, heavy thing with a 20" screen, but faultless.

The 8943 is good overall, but I'm not sure it's worth the £1500 I paid for it.

 

Let me guess, one with the HD5850? They dont tend to idle properly.

 

That's the one. Can anything be done about it?

 

Wow. I think I may NOT get it...lol. The specs on it sound great, but if the hardware can't perform, I may look elsewhere.

Thx!

 

I don't know. Just seen it in reviews such as the one at anandtech the 58x0 chips consume a lot at idle.

 

I have one, and really like it overall, but at this point you're better off waiting since they just announced the replacement:

Acer 8950G

Might want to wait to see what the reviews on that are, and if it's really no big improvement you'll probably have the option on getting the older model at a nice discount.

 

Great! Thanks for making my decision even harder! LOL! I will wait for the 8950G....it looks tempting! I still have a chance to pick up a mint Asus W90VP.....I may get that first, & if I don't like it, grab an 8950G...

 

Would anyone be kind enough to take a picture of their heatsink for the ATI 5850?

Im wondering if it could be modified and used in some of the other 18" but with a MXM 3.0 B card.

 

Hi,

I just got myself a 8943G and im really happy with it. I do however have the one thing thats sort of bugging me and i was hopeing someone here could help me out.

It's about the dual-mode touchpad. Right now while the touchpad is in media-mode the contol-buttons work as intended (play/pause, stop and so on) but the two launch-buttons (movie/music) launches Windows media player. I would like them to launch software of my own choosing.

I've been in contact with acer and their reply was more or less that they wont help with anything that works in it's default state. I've also been searching for a solution for a few days but can't seem to find any that works on this model.

Is there a way to remap these so that they launch other software than WMP?

 

Nope. I'm afraid the only one with an i7 is the 8940g. It has the space and the slot.

 

Any idea on who will be carrying this new model? Best Buy, Amazon, I guess...?

 

If the replacement has GDDR5 for video memory to pair with the sandy bridge that will make a nice difference.

 

Newegg was one of the first in the country to carry the 8943G (that's where I got mine) so I'd keep an eye on their website for the updated model.

 

I tried to call/email/chat with Acer & Newegg, to no avail. You can't get a hold of these companies,

just to ask a simple question about availability of the AS8950.

(I know it was supposedly just released yesterday, but I'm impatient!)

 

I feel your pain. Im impatient when it comes to new products.

However announced and released mean two different things. I suspect 90 days for it to arrive in the channel :-(

 

Hi @aleicgrant
How are you ?
Can you upgrade Core i7 to the best one on this machine?
Can I make RAID 0 on this machine? (in windows? 7)
can you show me disassembled this laptop even to see cpu heatsink and how GPU is connected

thnx so muuch

one more thing what I/O controller hub does this laptop have?
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-022304.htm

 

anyone know if there is a docking station out there for the 8943 that will do high res?

 

Can someone tell me the motherboard manufacturer and model number on the Acer 8943g? Much appreciated.

 

Hi All,
Got one of these on the way, as my 8942g died within warranty.
Just wondering if it's possible to upgrade the GPU?
Thanks.

 

Nope. 10char.

 

Thanks for getting back to me Meaker. I've noticed you've ordered a GTX460. Is it possible to upgrade earlier versions of the acer aspire?

 

The 8950G was available at Newegg, & TigerDirect for a short time.

Now, they both list it as Unavailable/Discontinued.....

 

Yes, mine was the last of the 7 seies.

8940g was the last of the 8 series and the 5935g was the last of the 5 series.

 

And do you think it will be possible to upgrade to an HD5850 will DDR5 ram in the future? Or an HD5870?

 

No, chips are all soldered in.

To give you an idea, to upgrade to GDDR5 you would have to:

A) use wave soldering to remove the GDDR3 chips off the motherboard and insert GDDR5 chips (if they are pin compatable, i think they are).

B) extract the system bios and open it up.

C) Find the video bios section in the main system bios.

D) Extract the differences between a DDR3 5850 and GDDR5 5850 from another pair of cards

E) Insert the changed code into the system bios and flash it.

F) Hope that it works.

 

Hi All.

Im new to this forum, tho I've been spec'ing posts for troubleshooting alot of times.. I've had this laptop for 6 months or so, and I have been somewhat happy with it. Unfortunatly I had "the" wireless issue, but fixed it by getting the 6200 intel.

Im having a few issues/problems, that I have seen other people complaining about aswell, tho noone really have come up with a solution for it.

1) Im getting "harddrive" lags in games and movies etc. Where its like the computer freezes entirely, and then wake's up in a few seconds.. This happens 2 times per hour or so, maybe less or more often sometimes.. Has anyone found a fix? I've already tried the thing where you reset/remove the "Idle" on the harddrive, but it didnt fix it. Also im using custom power settings so the harddrive wont set on idle there too.

2) Touchpad media controls are gone after i accidently tried to remove alot of the stupid bundled software that came along with the PC, unfortunatly the software for the touchpad's media controls has a misunderstanding name, "LaunchManager" and i thought (yeah, thought, silly me) that it was some sort of app to "launch" diffrent acer stuff on startup, so its gone. Fortunaly i found it again on acer's support site, installed it, but only thing that works is the volume control displaying the "meter", and the wireless/bluetooth displaying the actions taken.. Media controls still missing. Nothing happens when i push the little black button with the silver-ring.

3) This is more of a question: Does anyone has any good advices, or info on which SSD's are supported by the 2nd drivebay (here im also talking dimension wise), ive seen a few ppl using the OCZ Vertex 2, but does anyone recommend or have experience with something else? Im aware of the Harddrive cover is having these plastic dimmers sticking out but ill be sure to cut those off

Im using Windows 7 Premium Home (came with the laptop preinstalled).

Hope you guys can help me with some of these problems, or at least give me some better understanding on them.

Thank you in advance.

Greetings from Denmark
Charlie.

 

So how realistic is it to sit in bed with this computer on your lap? Way too big or need a stand? Trying to find a machine for my wife to do software development on and she works at night a lot. Also is keyboard backlit? Looking at the 8943G-9319 specifically. Thanks!

 

1. I fixed it using hdparm for Windows and a batch script that runs at startup:

Code:

hdparm -B 254 hda
hdparm -B 254 hdb

It's a hacky fix (UAC needs to be off and it sometimes has to be run manually to work) and I don't know if it's a perfect one, but it has worked for me so far.

2. Don't know about this one, maybe you need Acer Arcade Deluxe or the correct Synaptic drivers. I hardly ever use them since they don't work with iTunes (when it's not in focus).

3. I'm pretty curious about that too. There's a nice OCZ Vertex 2 160Gb on sale, and I'm tempted to upgrade. I've checked the dimensions of the built-in WD drives and they seem to be slightly larger than the OCZ drive (only .2mm).
Also, I'm wondering whether I can just use the recovery DVDs I made to restore my Win7 install, or if I have to clone my current drive onto SSD because I need the system restore partition on the HDD?

I've worked with it on the couch and it works quite nicely, although under heavy use you'll get a lot of heat on your lap. No back-lighting on the keyboard as far as I know.

 

Thanks for the information. I know a previous incarnation of this machine did have a backlit keyboard that's why I asked. So did the wireless issue get worked out of this machine or do you have to do a hardware upgrade?

Thanks again.

 

Im gonna check/try this out, and reply on whatever experience I'll get. Thanks for this tip.

I actually did fix this 2 days ago, and it appears that i DIDNT have the synaptics driver installed... I wasnt using the touchpad at all, but ofc i would like to "show off" the media functions too, and now they work. Apperantly it both needs LaunchManager and Synaptics drivers to work. (And remember FN+F7 if youre experiencing it wont work.. cauz you might have the touchpad disabled, which will disable the "Media Button" too.

I'm not sure on how to do the process youre discribing, but how about a fresh install? Then leap for acer.com and get the drivers for all needed hardware, manually restore program settings etc, and install everything fresh.. I know this dosnt answer your problem, but it would definatly make the best results for sure. Just remember to backup everything needed from the C/Windows drive before doing so.

Agree, it's do-able, but get's silly hot on left side (around TAB, Q, ½, 1 and ESC), wouldnt recommend using this on cotton or anything else than a stable desk, since it consumes alot of power and hence, gets heated quickly, and generally alot. But again, i think it can be done, without harm.

 

I've been trying to get the tool to work, bt with no luck. could you explain what you did withthat "hack" (hdparm).

 

I got the i5 version

but here's my index stats:

CPU: 6,7
RAM: 5,9
GFX (Aero): 6,3
GFX (Gaming): 6,9
Primary Harddrive: 5,6

 

Hi CharlieDP!

I had the exact same problem as you. The solution that worked for me is somewhat alike the solution posted, but with another program..

What you need to do(worked for me) is have all your games etc. which you can't have laggs on installed on your C: drive. In movies I only get freeze in the very start, then no more. These go to the other drives.

Install the program "QuietHDD" which can be found here:
quietHDD

Just making it clear that you use it at your own risk, as I was informed before.

 

Thx alot man.. Im trying it out this moment... I havnt used it long enough for any results yet, but so far, no lags... Are you just using it with standard setup, or did you change any values?

Thx again.

Charlie.

 

Just start the program, and the magic work itself.

 

Any luck yet, Charlie?

 

It was discontinued because it has the Intel Sandy Bridge processor that was recalled.

 

A single 6970 would have been enough or the 6850 with GDDR5.

 

Ok - been running Quiet HD for a few days now, testing with Counter-Strike source since thats the game that seems to get most harddisk action (somehow).... Well.. IT WORKS... no lags and stuttering!

Stoffey thank you!

For guys having the same issue with harddrive stuttering (2 to 5 seconds lags as id like to call it) load up quiet HD and keep it running.. just make a shortcut in start (in programs menu) and wooooop...

Thx again! Stoffey youre the man.

EDIT: It will not harm your harddrive... at least i have been running it for almost a week now without any problems.. only thing it does is, stopping youre harddrive from doing "parking" (head parking).. this will consume more power ofc, but in the end, its worth it.. especially if youre using this laptop for gaming!