Acer Aspire 5740G Owners Lounge

I have a 500GB (5400rpm) drive...so this should not be such a big difference. I have all original drivers...I only updated ATI driver and intel SATA driver (make sure you uninstall the old ati driver before you install the new one...made a big difference to me). They have some interresting videos on the ati driver site on how to install and uninstall their driver.
Graphics Drivers & Software
(scroll to the bottom)

I also uninstalled all the try-out software (incl. mcAfee...got the FREE microsoft security essentials instead) and disabled all unnecessary stuff from running at start-up.
Maybe you have something running in the background that slows your PC down.

 

uhm... sorry for going a bit of topic...
i was collecting info about the possibility to enable the vga switching on the 5740.
having found nothing but the thread here on notebookreview, i "enlarge" the search to the 5741; so i bumped into the drivers/bios page at the acer site.

it seems they've had quite a lot of problem with the bios...

Updating an incorrect BIOS may cause harm to your system. We recomend that you only do this after being instructed by one of our Customer Care representatives. By using these updates you agree to accept the possibility of product failure.

BIOS Acer 1. Updates Panel ID table to v1.5, adds SEC LTN156AT02-A11, BOE HT156WXB-500, AUO B156XW01-V.0 (more...) 1.13 5.5 MB 2010/08/23

BIOS Acer BIOS 1.12 5.5 MB 2010/08/16

BIOS Acer 1. Adds Panel ID Add LED Panel BOE HT156WXNB-500. (more...) 1.10 5.5 MB 2010/07/12

BIOS Acer 1. Fixes after resume from S3, WinFlash tool will show 'Verify Error' message while flash BIOS region. (more...) 1.08 5.5 MB 2010/05/31

BIOS Acer 1. Fixes IDE mode set Supervisor password/HDD password will hang up. (more...) 1.07 5.5 MB 2010/05/17

BIOS Acer 1. Fixes P-State switch fail with CPU Pentium P6000 & U5400. (more...) 1.06 5.5 MB 2010/04/26

BIOS Acer 1. Updates Arrandale kernel to support Arrandale K0 stepping. (more...) 1.05 5.4 MB 2010/04/19

BIOS Acer BIOS 1.02 5.2 MB 2010/03/03



quite strange, considering that the 5741 should be a 5740 repackaged in a new shell...

btw... no news for the vga switching on the 5741, either

 

Guys! I have a problem here.
Recently I noticed that whenever I hover my mouse (800dpi Laser) over my desktop, one core of my CPU is totally maxed out (96%) and the clock gets to 2533 mhz. The overall CPU usage percentage depends on the speed of the hovering of the cursor and ranges between 24% to 47%. The process that takes this percentage is 'explorer.exe'. This thing doesn't happen if I am into some application like web-browser or visiting folder. Only hovering the mouse over desktop space does it.
I tried reinstalling the drivers but no use. The interesting point is that when I switched this mouse with a normal LED mouse the problem vanished. I also googled a bit. It seems that this problem is more common or at least seems to occur only with laser mice.

 

I have Aspire 5740g when I push bluetooth button above keyboard comes up no device been to Acer drivers and installed driver and under system comes up with no device also,
So does this model have bluetooth or not if not why on earth would you have the blue tooth button on computer in first place waste of my money if dont have it when we purchase computers the less the better not need this for that and so on , so can some one please help me does it or no , many of posts asking but no answers added thanx for the help.

 

Usually several model shared similar notebook casing & not all model have similar hardware configuration. This is true for Acer notebook. Hardware configuration also different across different region for similar model. Because it use similar casing, the bluetooth button always there whether you have the bluetooth module or not. Usually it stated on the sticker (at palm rest area) if it have bluetooth. So, before buying any notebook, pay attention to the sticker for accurate hardware configuration. You can buy bluetooth module (internal device) at ebay if you want.

 

Omg.. my ESC key aint working.. Did restart but still doesn't work. Tried external keyboard and it worked there..
Wow this sucks much... There are no dust under that because i have keyboard protector.

 

recalibrated many times still 23% on all softwares

 

Lots of people here worrying about battery life and calibrating like there was no tomorrow.

I always understood that there were various things that you do with the old style Ni-Mh batteries that you shouldn't do with Li-Ion batteries and a little bit of research that I just did seems to confirm that:

"The above way of re-calibrating the laptop batteries works well with laptops using Ni-MH cells. But not with laptops using Li-Ion batteries because deep discharges will actually decrease the charge capacity and lifespan of Li-Ion cells. Moreover Li-ion batteries irreversibly lose approximately 20% capacity per year from the time of manufacture at a typical 100% charge level at 25deg.C, even when unused. Li-ion batteries irreversibly lose approximately 2%, 4%, 15% at 0deg.C, 25deg.C and 40deg.C respectively, when stored at 40% charge level. That is every deep discharge cycle decreases the capacity of the Li-ion batteries. As the Li-Ion batteries are chemical in nature, charging and recharging is not going to fix the problem once the chemical reactions stop happening. Therefore the best advice for re-calibrating the Li-Ion batteries is to store the battery at 40% charge if it kept unused for any unlimited period of time. Also don’t leave the battery in the laptop if you don’t use the battery or if you plug the laptop into outlet power."

I use my laptop plugged in nearly all the time and so my battery is coming out right now.

Other people here might like to think twice before calibrating.

 

Hi guys,

I have just looked throw 30 first pages of your threat at it was very helpful. Thank you. However, I noticed that mine 5740G's (ati hd 5650, i5 430m 640 HDD) temperatures are much highter. When I am browsing web it's about 55*C and when i play games it is about 80*C. I even tried to OC my GPU to 670/900. However when temperature reaches 85*C my ATI drivers (10.8) crashes. The same happens and on FurMark test.
Is that normal??

P.S. sorry for my broken English

 

That is why I never pay attention much to battery wear level. I use it while I can. I kept it plugged in all the time. I use my notebook regularly so there is no point for me to unplugged the battery. I don't have UPS so I will need to keep the better plugged in when using AC adapter. This way when power outage happen, it won't suddenly turned OFF. Anyway, this is my personal opinion.

(A bit off-topic) However, I found it is much safer to unplugged the battery if you hibernate & stored it in backpack. I found a while a go, there is a task in scheduler which set to wake the computer to run it. Fortunately, my notebook was at my desk when the incident happen, so no overheating happen. I already disabled the task but better safe than sorry.

 

It's all true apart from one thing- it's not true
The part you've quoted is about battery formatting (not calibrating)- battery formatting is something that should be done with Ni-MH but is not needed with Li-Ion and Li-pol batteries.
Re-calibrating is something else- it's (as the name says) meant to make the battery meter coherent with battery capacity. It doesn't improve your battery life and it makes it worse in the same way every other task you do when running on battery. The point of re-calibrating is to let the chip inside the battery "know" how much capacity is really there- otherwise you would encounter a situation where your battery meter shows say 30% and in a minute suddenly drops to 7%. So yes the battery loses its capacity on its own as I wrote many times but recalibrating is meant ONLY to make the battery meter show the real value- not to improve battery life.
There's no reason to think twice about re-calibrating as it doesn't make battery life any worse than any other task done on battery power- it's just another charge/discharge cycle- the only difference is it's a full discharge. BTW Li-Ion batteries shouldn't be stored discharged so it you do discharge a battery fully- charge it as soon as you can.
The only reason I recalibrate every once in a while is that I know that the battery loses capacity over time and I don't want an unpleasant surprise when I need battery power- e.g. battery meter showing values that used to be true but the capacity is no longer there.

 

Well, to me it looked like the part I quoted was precisely about calibrating and not formatting. That's what it said anyway. And I completely understand that Li-Ion batteries have no memory effect and dont need to be discharged/recharged from time to time. It looks like the author of the article understands that too.

Also it seems pretty clear from that article (and others that I have seen) that fully discharging (for whatever reason) a Li-Ion battery causes more harm than just using the battery normally. So in the end it's up to the individual whether they need an accurate meter reading that badly. I dont.

I was just concerned that people here might not be aware that repeatedly running these batteries down to shut-off point probably significantly decreases the battery life. One poster on the previous page actually said " recalibrated many times". So best done sparingly, if at all, I think.

It seems to me that what would be really useful would be a setting in the battery manager to allow it to stay around half-charge all the time. This would be great for people like me who hardly ever unplug the laptop, but would still like to prolong the battery life as much as possible whilst at the same time having enough charge to run it for an hour if needed.

I dont suppose the battery manufacturers would like it much though.

 

My 2cents:

the one important thing that wasn't mentioned was that your laptop battery also is your UPS (uninterrupted power supply) if you do casual use on your laptop then removing the battery and storing it at 40% level is a great idea, on the other hand, if you use your laptop for anything more than reading emails and surfing the net (ie: gaming, video editing, sound works etc) then you risk the all too real chance of losing all your work and maybe damaging your laptop.

Honestly if you have a dedicated external UPS(quite pricey) already then your fine...but if you're like me then you only have a surge protector for use with your laptop and even if your plugged in, once the circuit trips and you have no battery in your SOL.

it's up to you as the end user to decide which way you will go as both(removing or keeping battery in) have merits the deciding factor should be your usage of the laptop.

fyi my acer's battery is always in even when plugged in

 

btw, "calibrating" means leveling the voltage of every single cell in the pack.
this task is performed EVERY time the battery is full charged (it's the last bit of the charging process)

 

I see that both Sony and Lenovo have battery management software that can be configured to keep the battery at around 40-50% charge. Sounds like a good idea.

I am looking for some 3rd party software that can do this.

 

Hi guys,

I need help with one of these caddies, it´s this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Laptop-12-7...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item2a0a4b99e4

Has anyone been able to install it in an Aspire 5740G? I had one but it didn´t fit properly, I tried to mod it but ended up wasting the caddy. A friend of mine also bought one and it could fit properly but the laptop (5740G as well) didn´t boot at all with it installed.

Please help!!! If this caddy doesn´t work at all with the 5740G, is there any other caddy that works with this laptop?

Thanks guys

 

Can anyone help me?

 

i've used this http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290439320203

its working perfect with SAMSUNG 640GB hdd, previously i used 320GB seagate 7200rpm

 

Omg.. Another problem.

Yesterday my laptop shut down itself. When i tried to boot it up again, it didn't work. So i connected to AC plug back to laptop and it started to work again. When i was in Windows i saw that battery was 1% and charging. How the heck is it possible that the battery drained from ~70% to 0% ... :S

Now this morning i was using laptop on battery and suddenly it flashes with black screen and turns off. Then white screen appeared on the screen. It was white for about 1-3 second and then went completely black again.
Tried to boot again with battery only. I pushed the power button and it started to boot. Like 2-4 seconds later, the white screen appears again. Then i tried to use AC plug again and now there is no white screen.. What is going on?
Is it battery or is it LCD problem?

 

Look like your graphic card is failing. If it is LCD problem, it won't suddenly turned OFF completely.

 

can you connect the notebook to an external monitor?

 

You can, via hdmi or d-sub.

 

I have an issue. I am living in Israel and as you may imagine the heat here is a fact as the longer summer . I have bought zalman nc-2000 for my laptop but i want to put more cooling in it . I've opened the zalman and there are 2 tiny fans that barely rotate. I am wondering if i can add an additional fan / change the fans with faster /. I have some old 12V fans from old pentium II CPU , AKASA fan also for CPU. Or maybe change the current fans with double the speed ( 3krpm ) ? Are there any others ways to cool this laptop ? I prefer to see under 40C on my HDD at least .

( i am sorry if this is offtopic )

 

dave4mame actually responding to a post from sykrot.

 

But do you use it in aspire 5740G? or on another notebook?

 

Sure, but does it matter? I can't control the white screen. It comes so randomly. There has been no white screen yet, except the battery went again to 0% from 99% within seconds .

 

Hola Leolas,

yo he pedido esta que ha puesto el colega. Parece que el PCB es bastante más fino que la Fenvi que pedimos, además me ha costado menos de 10€. El cambio del dólar AU no veas como mola...

P.D. Eso sí, como no rule me cago en tó.

 

I was having a problem with my hdmi (got it fixed) but used driver sweeper trying to uninstall ati drivers completely. Now, I can't monitor my temps with hwmonitor. My ccc is not showing up either, but I have installed the newest drivers from ati.

Under device manager it says ATI Mobility Radeon 5650. Drivers say 8.682.1.0 date is 12/9/09. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling many times. It might be a little slower, but it is not like I have no drivers installed.

 

Seems like you got the original driver the laptop came with now...and you can't open the CCC? Happend to me once too...but uninstalling and installing the new drivers fixed it in my case. I didn't use driver sweeper though...just uninstalled through the windows programs list.

 

What you have now is the original ATI driver available at the time of 5740G's release. If Cats 10.8 doesn't install when you run an installer go to device manager, open ATI properties, choose to update drivers & navigate to C:\ATI\Support\10-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc\Packages\Drivers\Display\W76A_INF where driver inf is stored. Just choose the right GPU and confirm.
Making ATI CCC install may be more complicated if you've messed up some registry entries by using driver cleaner but CCC is not very useful anyway, so you can stick to driver only solution for the time being.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

I got my ccc back by installing the 10.7 beta drivers.

 

New ATI drivers 10.9...anyone installed it already?

 

That is for desktop graphic card.

 

Oh
Thanks!

 

hi guis, i have buyed 5740g with i330 and 5470 gpu....

any question

1) i can to install a i5 540 or i7 620m?
2) where i can find a screen lcd compatible shop's for this pc and send to italy
screen lcd?
3) ddr3 kingston hyperx work better?

i want to tuning this pc for my sister

 

1) As far as I know- no you can't. The CPU is soldered to the motherboard in this model.

2) I have no idea sorry.

3) It won't help performance but will cost you money. Even if you had a HD5650 version and were a vivid gamer you would see no increase in games let alone anything else.

If you want to improve performance of this notebook- single most important thing is a new HDD. Since SSD ones are still very expensive 7200rpm HDD would be a good choice. For reference- my 5400rpm drive has an average read speed (according to HD Tune) of some 63MB/s while Hitachi 7200rpm drive of the same size manages 82MB/s. It would make the notebook more snappy and responsive and you would be able to benefit from the old drive as an external backup drive.

 

downloads, cpu soldered to the motherboard?, are u sure? ; there is a man in a spanish forum who replace i3 330M into a i5 430, an he had this notebook too.

And someones like alstrike and me replaced hdd to ssd, a great improvement there, we are trying to changue dvd for a caddy with an hdd,we have no success by the moment, the first caddy we try not fit in our notebook, waiting for a new one.

 

No I'm not sure- that's why I wrote "as far as I know". I've seen several posts about this but no photos so far.
Someone in this thread was about to install an internal Bluetooth module or change thermal paste (or something ) so I asked him to post high-res photos of the inside of 5740 but so far nothing.
I'd like to know that too- not that I'm gonna upgrade myself- too expensive for the gain but I'd like to know regardless. IMHO soldering CPU would make no sense at all but that’s just speculation and we need evidence. Do you have any links to this Spanish site?

 

It would be nice if someone who nice enough to open their notebook casing & take a picture of the processor. This will solve the mystery once and for all. I doubt the processor is embedded. Did the spanish guy post any picture on their forum?

 

I doubt that too for one simple reason-but so far that's the only thing I've heard.

As for Spanish forums- a while ago I've explained why selling 8800mAh batteries available on eBay that are the size of our current 4400mAh ones is a scam.
Well that's how it should look like ( photo)
Found it on a Spanish forum here. The gentleman bought it for $86 and he confirms that the 5740G lasts for 6 hours straight under moderate use.

 

i have tried 1333 cl9 and it works only at 1066 cl7

 

The reason is- the memory controller is a part of CPU in Core i3/i5 series and for normal mobile CPUs support up to 1066MHz DDR3 and for ULV up to 800MHz DDR3.

 

That is the forum I said. the man disamble the notebook to opent holes in the base. And I was wrong, the notebook had i5 430, he test i3 330 hat he had to test it, sorry no photos i will ask him for them.

 

I've been following that forum so I must have missed that post. Anyway if you're a part of that forum and you can arrange for some good quality photos I'd be grateful.

 

I just asked the guy for some pictures , I hope he delivers

 

Does the Atheros AR5B93 wireless network adapter really have a wireless N mode? It's not showing up in the advanced properties...in fact all I see is 802.11b Preamble and AdHoc 11n.

When I bought this laptop I assumed it had a wireless N mode...was I gipped?

 

No you weren't. That's something that's set on a router- if you have an 802.11n router and you set it to run in this mode (and use WPA2 which is compulsory in 802.11n) you get n-speeds in AR5B93.

 

So if I'm running in mixed mode it will default to G speeds?

EDIT: I see now...changed the wireless mode and the security to WPA2 and it all works now...thanks again Downloads.

 

Well the spanish forum user ("starsay") has bought a i7 620m to replace i5 430, he will take photos when he make the replacement, the model is 5740/53400 SERIES.

 

Both Intel Core i3-330M & i5-430M only support DDR3-800/1066. My Dell Studio with i7-720QM support DDR3-1066/1333.