Acer Aspire 3000 Base Install Lockup

Acer Aspire 3000 Base Install Lockup
OK,

My personal feelings about AMD's aside I own an Acer Aspire 3000 notebook with a 17" screen and which doesn't appear to work with any Windows OS (including the one it shipped with, XP home) ... for some reason I can't rationally explain it locks very early in the process. I have tried it with Windows 2000 Pro, XP Home & Pro, Vista & Windows 7 & various distros of Linux (the only one that works) ... I'm not a huge fan of Linux and some of the hardware isn't supported (such as on-board wireless).

Hardware spec is Sempron 1800+ (equiv. to 3200 IIRC), 1GB ram, 100Gb HD, 17" widescreen i.e. not powerful but good enough, in principle, to do basic wireless surfing and office stuff. The system is about 4 years old.

There's no support for other OS's on the Acer Support site so I discarded all the other OS's and concentrated on XP Home based on the idea that, if anything, that OS will work as it was supplied with it i.e. I am installing it off the system partition.

The things I have checked so far are:

• Safe Mode: It runs perfectly fine (with wireless).
• The hard disk: I have tried with three drives the original 40GB, 60Gb & 100GB
• Memory: Check with Memtest86 with no errors (also runs fine under Linux)
• Wireless/Modem module (I think that's what it is) ... removed (still fails)
• DVD/RW ... had problems but changed for a working unit (I was given an old spare)
• System: cleaned and dismantled to check for obvious issues.
• Keyboard: changed for unit from spare.

There's no real diagnostic utility or disk that I am aware of on the Acer site.

Now for the interesting and slightly weird stuff

• It doesn't lockup in SAFE MODE.
• The system appears to lock up when I boot it up (using only the onboard touchpad and keyboard).
• It DOES NOT lock up if I attach a USB mouse & keyboard (curiously the onboard keyboard and touchpad also work OK).

This implies to me that the system locks up because of drivers, but when used with other drivers (forced by USB devices?) it doesn't ... maybe the generic keyboard/touchpad drivers don't lock it up?

As a result the drivers for the touchpad & keyboard have been uninstalled but they tend to re-install after (during that time the system is usually stable (and they still work) so I wonder how I disable the specific drivers and prevent reinstallation to allow standard drivers to be used?

I've asked this elsewhere with many ideas but no success but the thing I want to stress is that I am using the default (manufacturer) XP Home install ... of all the configs tried this one SHOULD work.

Keke

 

Aspire 3000 is 15,1" so I'm not sure if we are talking about the same notebook.
If you want to test Vista on it it's kind of supported by Acer- some additional drivers are available on their old FTP here
Try to use the most recent drivers from respective manufacturers' websites instead of Acer ones. You may also prevent XP from installing drivers for certain devices if you choose to- although I already don't remember how I did it back then
I've used Aspire 5000 which is in essence Aspire 3000 but with Turion 64 instead of Sempron and I remember that those notebooks were said (or rumored) to be defective by design. Supposedly something with mobo that couldn't be fixed without redesigning the mobo. I don't know if it's true but take that into consideration too. It may not be solvable at all- although I'm not claiming its the case- I'm just giving the info I got.

 

I don't know if it's the same but this one is definitely 17" and it clearly says "Aspire 3000" on the LCD bezel

I'd be happy if I could get the default OS working

I've managed to stop it installing the touchpad driver by disabling it Device Manager ... it wasn't easy coz I couldn't do it in Safe Mode, couldn't uninstall it properly and it locked in the OS before I could disable it. Now the OS boots mostly OK ... it has locked once which makes me think this is not the full solution but I'm closer

Thanks for the info ... I'll bear that in mind

Keke