Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

Search for a service manual for Acer Aspire 5738G- it has the same chassis as 5740G and includes what in essence is a tutorial on how to dismantle it and install or remove different components including BT. Keep in mind that sharing service manuals is forbidden by forum rules so don't link to it when you find it

Your problems may be related to hardware decoding of the video by ATI card. The easiest way to solve driver related problems is to uninstall drivers completely reboot and install again (even the same drivers). You may have some leftovers from older Cats in registry causing problems.
The other thing to test is K-Lite Codec Pack which I use BTW- good stuff. It includes Media Player Classic that enables you to switch on or off hardware video decoding- easy way to test if this is the root of your problem.

 

after installing latest k lite codec the problem still persist... i have attached the screen shot.

 

First of all try to uninstall ATI drivers and install them again (but don't install on top of existing one)
Second thing- open the video file in question (preferably MKV) with Media Player Classic, right click on the screen and choose Renderer settings --> display stats (or use CTRL +J)
Red overlay should be visible on the screen including a message showing "Using DXVA" or "Not using DXVA" Which one is it?

BTW What's wrong on the screenshot?

 

in that screenshot the display is only in the center of the screen
and in rhs and lhs there is no display.. its black.

i want to completely remove the ati drivers.. hw do i do that ? by going to device manager or by control panel..?

 

Try downloading a sample HD (720p) movie from the following link and then see whether you still get those black bars.
WMV HD Content Showcase

If not then that means Downloads is right, there is nothing wrong with the video. You were actually trying to play a video that couldn't be stretched by the video player to fit the 16:9 screen while still maintaining the aspect ratio of the video at the same time. Thats why you got those black bars.
But if you configure your player not to maintain the aspect ratio then it will definitely play in full screen but the playback wouldn't be proportional.

By the way whats your desktop resolution?

EDIT: @downloads.
I am currently using WMP, Jetaudio and VLC. Doesn't these players or windows 7 itself support hardware acceleration of the videos by default or I have to do something extra to enable the hardware acceleration.

 

WMP 12 does support and use hardware acceleration by default- don't know about the other two but there's an easy way to test it.
Launch AMD GPU Clock and take a look at UVD status when video is being played- if it shows BUSY it is hardware accelerated, if IDLE it's not.

 

Downloads, you are right. WMP 12 seems to use the HA pretty well compared to other two players I mentioned. I don't know whats the reason.
I am currently using GPU Observer gadget.
These were the results of an MP4 video (1024x576):
WMP 12 : 100Mhz/150Mhz @ 0.9v (doesn't not vary)
Jet-Audio: 550Mhz/750Mhz @ 1.0v (doesn't not vary)
VLC : switches randomly between these values:
100Mhz/150Mhz @ 0.9v and 450Mhz/750Mhz @ 1.0v

 

Can anyone help me out. I want to know if there is a way to permanently overclock the hd5650 so that eveytime the laptop restarts core and memory dont revert to there original state which is core550 and memory750. I am currently using Amd gpu clock tool but i dont want to have to put in the setting everytime.

 

desktop resolution is set to max (1366*768).
can i re install my ati drivers.. will that help..?
whats the best way of completely removing the ati drivers.. ?

 

i also would like to know if i manage to permanently overclock my hd5650 so that it doesn't revert to factory settings at restart and also disable powerplay which is supposed to automatically downclock the GPU and memory will having my GPU running at 650core and 850memory all the time cause them to overheat or will it simply not overheat if I'm not playing games or doing anything graphically demanding since i will be disabling powerplay permanently?

 

first you'll want to uninstall the ati catalyst controller via the controll panels uninstall. The download a program called registry clean expert and run it which will remove any onused registry files. make sure that if you use the program after the registry scan is complete to select all the files that have been dtected as problems so that when you click the fix problems tab all the registry errors will be fixed. then check in the upper right hand corner to see that where it says problems remaining the number is at zero.

 

Have you tried playing the HD video (720p)? Does it play in full screen?
Plz post a screenshot of your desktop if possible.

 

a much better way is:

1. download and install driversweeper from here

2. uninstall ati drivers(make sure you have the current ati downloaded somehwere easy tof ind on you laptop)

3. reboot into safe mode

4. run driversweeper checking off all ati related checkboxes

5. reboot

6. reinstall ati drivers

*optional* before doing step 6 you can also run ccleaner(also with built in registry cleaner, and a much safer and respectable freeware program to use IMHO) available here

and then reinstall ati drivers


hope this helps.....


@subro.....if the aspect ratio of the movie file is not in widescreen then the default format to play is always 4:3, what you will need to do is right click and change aspect ratio to 16:9 to get full screen viewing....a better program to use to play videos and dvds is the vlcplayer which is freeware and plays ALL formats including divx,xvid,mkv,wmv, etc. available here right clicking on the screen you can scroll down the menus to change aspect ratio.

 

Can't be done at present- no other way to OC so you'll have to do that manually using AMD Tool.
Regarding your second question- since you have to do it manually disabling PowerPlay is pointless but regardless- would you disable SpeedStep and make your CPU run at max clock all the time? Probably not- the same with PowerPlay.

 

Re-hello

So, i have this asking: when you play games, or use the laptop as a whole, do you guys remove the battery?
Is it advisable when I play games, or should it stay this way as long as I am plugged in?
I also want to know if the presence of a battery affects Gaming performance: does it lower it or anything?

Thanks.

 

Doesn't change performance. Some people claim that removing battery will prolong its life which is true but only to a certain extent. Battery will lose capacity even when not in the notebook so what you do it add a few months to its life at a cost of not having an UPS or a notebook for that matter.
An example- I own a 5740G for over four months now and my battery wear level is 0% (I will drain it fully soon to test it though) and I have in inserted all the time.

 

I keep mine removed most of the time now. After a month of having the notebook, I had only used the battery 2-3 times. I had probably used it more, but not much (1-3%). My wear level is already at 5%.

 

Hello folks, finally i bought this laptop and kinda read ~120 pages, but still can't find hoe to OC gpu. Downloaded the soft that is written in first page and dunno where and how many set those MHzs.. Attached SS.

 

Hello.My question is will Overclocking the GPU with the tool in the first page void waranty of the laptop?

 

Have a look at this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...rks-tweaks-mods-upgrades-116.html#post6432896

 

Hello to all the users of the Aspire 5740G

First of all, thank you for all your good hints, that convinced me in choosing the very fine laptop, and also for the good tips for it's use.
(And excuse me for my bad typping, I'm not really fluent in English)


I'm totally happy about this computer, well sure using the trackpad is quite a hell when you are not use to it.
If some people reading my message are still not sure about this laptop ... well buy it !!!

I only have one little problem with video reading (I speak full screen at max resolution)
When i read files (720p and 1080p) no problem : Image is perfect, no lag.

But when i read from DVD (with VLC or WMP) I found the image not to be pretty or clean. I don't know how to explain it but it's no sharp, it's little bit blurry.
Is it normal because after all, the resolution of a DVD is 720x576 and I try to "Upscale" to 1360*768
Or is there something I should do ?
(All my drivers are up to date)

Hope you understand me D )

And thank you for your help !

 

Hi all fellow 5740G users

I bought the laptop last week, so far so good. No complaints really except of battery life. I read some posts here that battery lasts over 3 hours on power saving just browsing internet. I tested it today, with a very low activity on laptop, just msn with some browsing and I managed to get only 2 hours 21 minutes, all settings set for max battery life. Latest bios version, no epower management installed however. Could it be it? Thanks for suggestions!

 

Anyone? may sound stupid, but still can't figure out.. downloaded AMD GPU ClockTool v0.9.26.0 and dunno where and by how much should i increase..?

 

My DVD player runs really sluggish and skipping frames when I watch some homemade movies that I've burned. The DVD's run smooth even on my 4 year old Dell with onboard graphics...

I remember I had that problem before with my old laptop running win XP...I was able to fix it by changing the secondary channel (DVD Drive) from PIO to DMA mode in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers...but guess what? I don't have any channels at all listed on this acer...

anybody has any channels listed there? check my screen shot...

 

never mind, found out on a page.. oh and by the way, installed launch manager and it works just fine..

 

Set 650MHz for core and about 850MHz for memory, use "set clocks" button and you're done. After you've finished gaming use "restore default clocks" button. If everything goes fine you may increase both values until you either see artifacts (probably little dots- that's memory) or computer stops responding (that would be core)

There are two possibilities either the source that was placed on DVD wasn't that good in the first place (sometimes it doesn't get remastered and is in essence VHS on DVD) or you got used to HD I have similar feeling having watched a HD movie with everything less-than-HD.
Still you may want to test K Lite Codec Pack and use Cyberlink decoder as default for DVD.

That was XP specific issue that is no problem under Vista or Win 7. It may be a problem with recording quality- some drivers have batter correction while the others don't so it's possible that DVD drive in Dell is just better in this respect. Use K Probe on one of DVDs you have problems with and post a screenshot.

 

Hello all, I've owned the 5740G-6979 for over a month and yesterday I experienced the pink dots and green dots everywhere. I plugged in the HDMI port to my TV and the screen was perfect on the TV but still pink and green internally. I restarted the computer with the HDMI unplugged and the screen was black. I updated BIOS to 1.22 and the latest ATI CCC drivers but my screen is still completely black but fine with the HDMI output. The backlight of the LCD isnt even on, its not even powered it seems. It seems it doesnt recognize I have an internal screen. When i try and switch modes with projector (duplicate or extend etc) it only detects my TV as my lone display. Under the displays page of ATI CCC there is only the TV no internal screen. Any ideas? Can I reinstall some sort of driver? My web cam doesnt work either. THANKS SO MUCH!

 

Thanks for the battery-question answer ,was helpful
Now i Have 1 more thing to clear out:
What are the HIGHEST SAFE Temperatures for the Core and GPU?
I have CPUID Hardware Monitor and GPU-Z (special for GPU) that can track the temperature scale. So what are the highest safe temperatures for both the Processor and the GPU ( you can also tell me the optimal ones).
Just need to know at what point should I start yelling and worrying that my laptop overheats. Thanks again, you guys are helpful, thank you for being there

 

I'd recover Windows using recovery partition to make sure it's no software issue, which it doesn't seem to be unfortunately and if it doesn't help RMA the notebook.

You don't have to worry about overheating- this notebook has a very good cooling system but still you can assume that id GPU is below 80*C it's OK, same goes for CPU although getting it up to 80*C is easier but only possible when recoding video or in stress tests. Optimal temperatures are impossible to determine- don't worry about it- your average and max temps depend more on where you live and what's your room temperature than on anything else. Acer (or Wistron eho actually makes this notebook for Acer) did a good job designing the cooling system.

 

You were totaly right !
The DVD i tried was a cheap (but genuine) one, those you buy at 30€ for 5 movies.
Yesterday I tried my collector version of Lord Of The Ring and the lastest springsteen live DVD, and the image is waaaayyy better !
Well buying cheap DVD has a price ! I won't go fullscreen on those.

Thank for the help !

 

i tried playing HD video.. i hav attached the screenshot.. there are some visible bunch of black dots in the video.. but when i play this on my desktop so such dots are visible..???

 

Black dots! where? Do you mean to say black bars?
Moreover, that video is not 720p, its 528p. So, it can't be played without those black bars in fullscreen while still maintaining the aspect ratio to default in VLC player's video settings. To play in fullscreen you will have to change the aspect ratio to 16:9 (native).
Try playing the video located in 'C:\Users\Public\Videos\Sample Videos'. It will be played in fullscreen without black bars. It has a resolution of 1280x720 that yields a ratio of 16:9.

EDIT: I think you are talking about the bunch of black spots on Farhan Akhtar's face. At first, I thought it was mud. I think theres a problem with VLC. It doesn't handle videos much efficiently. While WMP 12 seem to play HD videos much more smoothly and quickly. Test that sample HD video in both VLC and WMP. For me it started choppily with artifacts in VLC but played fine in WMP 12.

 

Two things- first you GPU is showing as HD5650 which means you have some ancient drivers- the recent ones and at least few back recognize this card as 5600/5700 series. So update your drivers first.
Second thing- Media Player Classic is not using DXVA but it should.
When installing K Lite Codec Pack remember to set H264 to be hardware accelerated.
Also in my case mixer output is NV12 while in yours it's YUY2. It has something to do with colors but I have no idea what

 

I don't know what to say but there are certainly few things that I really miss in this laptop. First, a fingerprint reader which was a dream of mine. Second, the 5.1 surround sound right out of the box with the analog speakers (which I have, INSPIRE 5200). I got my laptop for 45000 INR but even a cheap 26000 INR Acer notebook such as 4736z has these features.
The sound chip inside 5740g is ALC272X and the chip inside 4736z is ALC888s.
Wow! Acer, your good notebooks has good specifications but your dirt cheap notebooks has better premium features.

 

OK I got a question. Is the "P" button illuminated (backlit) when you push it?
I'm sure that it never did that but apparently I've "improved" something to the point where my "P" button doesn't launch an app it should but gets glowing when switched on and stops when pushed again :/

 

so should i re install my ati drivers ..??

 

Which version did you installed? The latest version is 10.6 but 10.7 is coming at the end of this month. Where did you download the driver? Acer or ATI website?

 

You must have improved something...mine does not light up at all...it just launches my program

 

^^mine same , doesnot light up but launches the program

 

hey, at what speed you all can connect with atheros wifi card on n?
i was thinking here that maybe my antenna is damaged not sure =/
with my atheros i can only get 130mbps

 

Somebody.....Plz help me in setting up 5.1 speakers through S/PDIF out.
I know that it could be done using miniTOSLINK adapter but I want to make sure whether the SPDIF is electrical or optical only. Then I think I would be needing a DD/DTS receiver. Am I right?
Are creative Inspire 5700 Digital compatible with this laptop's SPDIF? I am totally confused. Plz forgive me if it sounds noobish. But I am googling a lot but still not being able to find an exact answer.

 

New Cats are coming out on Monday- that's official.

Just look at this beauty I made it work as an Eco button for a while (not fully working) but now I'm back to launching a chosen app with it.

What are your wireless settings? Do you use 40MHz channels, WPA2+AES and is your wireless router capable of 300mbps?

All I can tell you is that SPDIF is not optical- it's electrical only. If it was optical you could see it in the audio jack- they glow slightly in red.

 

yes, e3000, remember my problem with intel adapter? im still trying to figure that out hehehe
but im considering roll back to atheros, really dont know where is the problem here...maybe is the intel adapter, maybe antennas!
with atheros i can get 130mbps, with intel 6200 only 150! tried everything already...
i made a few tests, and maybe antenna 1 is fault...thats why im asking wich speed u guys connect with atheros

 

If you jeep jumping between the threads and switching between cards you are going to get me completely lost
OK- Atheros is two spatial stream card- there are only two ways to achieve 130mbps with 802.11n a two spatial streams and both mean you have to be running a 20MHz channel width. If you change it to 40MHz you get 270mbps.

Check channel width setting on the router.

 

humm im gonna try then, i posted here because the other thread is dead =/
i hope i can get 270 with atheros, because if not, then ill be sure that is an antenna problem =/

 

Why don't you post a screenshot of your wireless settings page on the router.

 

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screenss hehehe
just to let you know, i switched to atheros, and got the 300mbps speed with atheros, maybe this discard an antenna problem!

for the first time i was able to connect with 300 mbps after i bought the router, maybe because dd-wrt firmware, that i havent tried with atheros card!

with intel 6200 pro bla bla, i can only get 150mbps, doesnt matter wich channel, and band(2.4 or 5.0)

but now with atheros a new problem, im connected on 300mbps, but my transfer speed between my desktop and notebook is around 4-5mbps
with intel connected at 150, i can get around 10!
really weird =/

 

Wow! 130Mb/s ?
That's fast...I thought I had a fast connection...My actual download speed is 21Mb/s... (21000 Kbps)
And I am connectet: wireless = with 54Mbps
cable = 100Mbps with the atheros card.

 

noo hehehehe
130mbps now 300mbps, that should give me something much better than 3mb/s transfer speed, but i can only get 2 3 4mb/s

with intel card is impossible to connect above 150mbps, and transfer speeds are around 10mb/s

well i made new tests here, and tried the same thing i did with intel pro set wireless 6200 with atheros, changing antennas plugs, and trying each one at a time!
at least now im sure that my notebooks antennas are right, when i only connected white antenna 2, with intel, nothing happened still the same 150mbps, doesnt matter wether im using both antennas or not! intel only works fine with antenna number 2, antenna number 1 is useless for intel adapter! but for atheros, he needs both antennas to connect and get good signal!

its like intel is only working with 1 antenna, and the other plug adapter on the card is fault, really weird...but at least i can get 10-12mb/s transfer speed, connected with 150mbps! atheros sucks, shows that is connected at 300mbps, but cant reach transfer speeds higher than 4mb/s, with no security achieved about 8 mb/s transfering from my desktop

i think im gonna replace atheros again with intel, and keep intel even damaged...and try the only thing i didnt since all this drama started...format c:

 

Hi all....

I had a problem on my notbook..

My problem is when I access to my movies folder that I put a lot of movie there, WINDOWS EXPLORER will stop working and it will restart...

Somebody help me....