Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

That's silly of me, I completely forgot to mention that I'm not playing cataclysm. I'm playing vanilla WoW (1.12.1) on a private server. I've more or less come to the conclusion that this original WoW client simply doesn't support switchable graphics (ATI anyway). I don't know if there's a workaround or not, but I cant seem to find one.

Yeah I've played around with several drivers. Thanks a bunch for the response though, if you have any other suggestions I'm open!

 

has anyone upgraded the mini pci express network card on their 4820tg? I was wondering if there is anything specific I need to worry about before I buy one.

I was looking at this one because it seems to be the highest rated on Amazon and it is also discounted:
Amazon.com: Intel Ultimate N 633ANHMW IEEE 802.11n (draft) Wi-Fi Adapter - Mini PCI Express - 450Mbps, Bulk: Electronics

 

The 4820tg only has 2 antennas, whereas the Intel card has slots for 3. It will still work, however I'm not sure about the speed/distance gains. I think Bronksy had done this, so he would have a better idea on that.

 

With two antennas 6300 will perform like 6200 would have- nothing to gain here.
The only thing to watch for when buying Intel 6300 is to avoid Lenovo branded ones- they don't work in non-Lenovo notebooks.

 

Hi guys, wondering if anyone could shed some light on a problem I have.

I have had the 4820tg for the past year and a half, very happy with it. I think I have broken the headphone/spdif output though.

I had my laptop connected to a speaker cable, didn't realise and pulled away my laptop, breaking the speaker jack inside the output. I got the bits out of the output but now headphones/speakers won't work in the output, so all I got is the internal speakers

I have heard of this with PCs, but do you think it would be possibly to assign the mic output for speakers/headphones via software ? or are they completely different?

Failing that, any other ideas - am I looking at taking the laptop apart/ going to a repair shop?

Thanks guys,
Rich

 

I think your best option here would be to just take it to a repair shop and get the audio jack taken care of from them.
I don't think its possible to convert the mic jack into the audio jack without opening up your laptop and resoldering some wires and connections anyways.

 

cheers for the advice omni, I have seen some able to switch outputs with software, but perhaps it is not possible with laptops/ this soundcard.

 

Hey my warranty will be going out in about 2-3weeks is it possible for me to call acer and ask for a new battery? I just wanna know if i can take full advantage of the warranty? my battery is fine but heh you know if i can get for free through warranty would be awesome

 

Lol, I'm trying to do the same thing and in a similar situation. When I spoke to them a few days ago, they're gonna ask you to check BIOS and stuff and its pretty lengthy. They tech support I was speaking to said battery will be covered.

 

u know if i would have to send them my old battery? or can i keep it.

 

Hey guys... terrible news.
My 4820tg just died today while I was in class. I opened a PDF and was using it to do some home work, and I also was installing visual studio and it just froze up. I thought perhaps something went wrong with the installation, so I pushed the power button and tried to start it back up.

It gets to the ACER screen but it won't go into the bios, it just sits with the ACER logo and makes beep noises at me when I press f2.

Any advice on fixing?

I bought the laptop about a year ago, but I also bought it with an American Express so I might have that extra warranty.

I put a SSD in it to replace the cd drive and the f10 key fell off by itself because of the cheap keyboard. Do these modifications void the warranty?


I'll keep looking into why it died, but it doesn't make me want to buy another acer...

 

It may have been your hard drive. I remember in my old laptop, when my hard drive failed, it was just stuck on that screen where it asks you to press a button to enter bios. Try replacing the hard drive and see if that might fix it. Also, do this quickly so that if you are still in warranty, you may at least be able to get it serviced.

 

Having a bad hard drive stops you from getting into the bios?
That doesn't seem right.

And that would mean the SSD is broke since I'm using the hdd for storage I guess.

I will try that only because I have no idea what else to do at this point.

edit: Took out ssd and put in HDD, got an error and it allowed me to boot into bios. Google searched error and disabled boot from LAN in bios and that allowed me to get to the part where it detected my HDD at least. Putting SSD back in to see if I fixed this... odd unexpected problem.

edit: nope... still some kind of problem

edit: I am fairly certain that you were correct and that it was the SSD that was causing the problem. I am going to try to RMA the SSD, and as we speak I am re installing windows on the hdd.

 

wherever your OS files are located is what MAY be affected.

Another member from this thread was able to get it a spare sent via warranty and allowed to keep his old battery.

 

Hmm, maybe my SSD isn't dead then. I should test it out on my main desktop PC I guess....

 

Keep us posted here. There is bound to be someone who can be of more help.

 

At the very least I am installing all my drivers on the laptop with the stock setup ... so it had to do with either the files or the actual ssd. And yes, I will post results.



Btw, I thought I had a 3 year warranty because I bought this laptop with an american express card... wasn't there some kind of deal? Just wondering cause I could really use a new battery/possibly keyboard.

 

I'm not exactly sure on the deal and offers that were being offered on this notebook. U would just go to the acer warranty website and see if the warranty with your serial actuvates, if you haven't done that already.

 

1 year manufacturer + I think some credit cards like american express adds another 1 year after that. I did the exact same thing .

 

Do they auto add another year or do you actively have to do something? I did buy it with american express so I would request a battery and a new keyboard from acer considering this laptops battery wear is near dead and the keyboard is popping out all the time.

Also, after re installing windows and the drivers, I've been using the laptop a lot for school and I can't get the track pad the way it was before. Does anyone know how to get it so that the right side scrolls.

 

just install all the drivers listed in this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/7480048-post800.html

they are the latest for the 3820tg (best you can get right now), and they will work fine for the 4820tg because it has the same exact hardware.
I personally use all the drivers listed in that post in my 4820tg.
the synaptics driver listed there will allow you horizontal scrolling and vertical scrolling (you have to go into the settings to customize it)

 

I did use those (I had it bookmarked) but I guess I need to mess with settings to get vertical scrolling on the right side of the track pad working.

 

Dear all,

These past two mornings I have been quite sad when I booted my 4820tg at uni, because the battery was empty. First I thought the first night it had not been plugged in, but last night I charged it fully and shut it down.... only this morning, dead battery again.

As the webcam is also not working anymore, I thought maybe its finally time to send it for repair, but its kinda always a bad time to miss your laptop

Is there anything I could check regarding the battery, before I send it in, something that might fix the issue? I can't imagine myself what I could do to fix it.

Update:
I just got back home, and I plugged in power without battery -- works fine. Then I put in the battery and it starts charging. I see the Win7 icon going up and down in the battery meter like indicating it is charging, but after some time it stops going up and down, but hovering the mouse over from time to time it still seems to be charging.

Then I tried unplugging at 7% and it told me to plug in power because it was low. Then I did, and it immediately jumped to 18% charge. Is this normal?

- Martin

 

I was playing League of Legends plugged in, doing fine, when my 4820TG shut off. Stopped working.
It wont start up at all now. Plugged in, not plugged in. Removed the battery, put it back in. There isnt a charging indicator on the laptop at all - just appears to be straight dead.
My time with this laptop has been pretty hellish, and the things already been sent in repair once (though when I got it back, it still had all the same issues I saw, but at least it worked)... it could possibly be past its warranty now. Any suggestions?

 

From what you're describing, its most likely your battery. Getting a new battery should fix that. As for the webcam, did you do a clean install and add a new OS? It might be driver issues.

Remove the battery, but leave the power plugged in. Does it boot?

 

Hi everyone,

I have been the happy owner of an Acer TimelineX 4820TG since October 2010 and everything has always been fine until yesterday evening:
my laptop is attached to the power cord most of the time, but from time to time, I disconnect it and run it from battery power. In such cases when the power source changes is detected, graphics card are switched from the High-end GPU (ATI HD 5470) to the Low-end GPU (Intel chipset) in order to save battery usage. During this process the display flickers (Windows reducing number of colors), goes black and then returns as before (but using the other GPU).
Yesterday, when that switch occurred, after returning from the black screen, the desktop reappeared inverted/mirrored, ie the image is not displayed "left to right" but "right to left". To get myself clear, you would have to look at the screen in a mirror to get the display correctly. And not only this, but the image is also blurred: looking closely, it looks as if every two vertical lines have been swapped.

Maybe the images below will make the situation more explicit (full desktop + close up on time/date):
.

I have tried rebooting, and the problem persists even with the BIOS screen, which excludes a driver problem and would tend to indicate a hardware failure. The display is fine on an external monitor, both on the VGA and HDMI outputs, as you can see from the following images:
.

Has anyone experienced the same issue on this model or even another laptop? Am I right in assuming the the graphic card is still OK and the problem lies with the display panel? Any suggested solution?

Thanks in advance!

 

Check the properties of the intel GPU. You may have accidentally changed something or a program might have done something.

 

Hi omni & thxs for your reply!

Following your advice, I have checked the properties of the Intel GPU using the Intel Control Center: I have tried to fiddle with every setting available but without any success. The image is still reversed and garbled on the integrated display and still displaying normally on the external screen.
Did you have any specific setting/option in mind?

Again, I would like to stress that the problem is present both with the ATI GPU and the Intel GPU. Moreover, the display shows the problematic behavior as soon as the computer is turned on, ie even with the Acer boot screen or inside the BIOS configuration menu. Thus I really have a difficult time imagining that it's a simple setting problem, except of course for a setting that would be "written" directly to a chip on the motherboard.

 

Try using a system restore point to bring your system back to a time it was working properly.
Just click start and search "system restore" in the search box and it will come up.

Also:
When you switch from your external monitor to your laptop's monitor, do you press Window's Key + P and select "Disconnect projector" option? Or do you just pull the cable going from your monitor to your laptop? Doing the latter will cause problems like that. Try plugging your laptop to the external monitor, and then disconnecting the projector via the window's key+p

 

i've got a few weird issues with my 4820t (i3 330m) which i havent really be able to find any info on:
1) (minor but irritating) every so the screen has a fit where the gamma will go haywire for a few seconds, and then return back to normal. it seems to slowly increase gamma, say there 5 seconds or so, and then return back to normal. seems to be fairly reproducable by having a black background, and then switching to a high brightness screen eg: win7 startup between initial loading and the blue loading screen, or a back background and then shutdown.

2) this is the bigger one; laptop will be half frozen when it resumes from hibernate (maybe 1 in 10 resumes). keyboard and mouse are unresponsive, but win7 does display the loading mouse cursor (animated blue circle). having set the power button to hibnerate, i can re-hibernate sucessfully and wake it up again without issue, but i have to press&hold power button to fully turn off laptop and get it working again.
i've also had linux on the laptop aswell, and that seems to kernel panic at about the same frequency as windows freezes, so it appears not to be an OS/installation.

any ideas?
i'm thinking the systemboard has had enough; one of the USB prots seem flaky and at the weekend i saw something along the lines of "bios has not finished communicated with ME". i didnt get time to take a picture of it, but it looks like it could be down to the Intel MEI subsystem. so far it's only happened once, so i'll keep an eye on it.

for the 4820TG owners; is the ATI discrete GPU part of a 'systemboard', or a seperate expansion slot card? i think my systemboard is on the way out , so instead of going for the basic intel graphics, i'd though i'd improve the laptop by going with the discrete graphics option. i'm guessing i'll need a cooler aswell, so hopefully AcerSpareParts store can help out ... it'd be nice to know what i need to ask for though.

 

For the 1st problem, is it during when using battery only ?
If it is, check the Intel HD Control Panel, untick 'Display power saving technology", its under Intel HD Control Panel, Power - Power source (on battery),

 

cant say i've noticed if it's been on charge or not; i'll give those options a go though and see how it goes. thanks for the suggestion!

 

Recently I've had a couple of these crashes happen when I return from sleep mode. I used WhoCrashed to analyze dump files.

On Wed 2/1/2012 6:00:39 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\020112-17830-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: atihdmi.sys (Unloaded_AtiHdmi.sys+0x35F4)
Bugcheck code: 0xD1 (0xFFFFF88007F685F4, 0x2, 0x8, 0xFFFFF88007F685F4)
Error: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\atihdmi.sys
product: ATI HDMI Audio Driver
company: ATI Technologies, Inc.
description: ATI High Definition Audio Function Driver
Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode driver attempted to access pageable memory at a process IRQL that was too high.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: atihdmi.sys (ATI High Definition Audio Function Driver, ATI Technologies, Inc.).
Google query: atihdmi.sys ATI Technologies, Inc. DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Is that my RealTek audio driver? Or is it part of AMD's drivers for the video card?

 

I've updated my AMD/Intel drivers and installed the latest Catalyst Control Center.

Now when I plug in my VGA connector for an external display, my PC no longer automatically detects it. I have to right click, go into screen resolution, and click detect myself. It switches then.

I checked for any relevant settings in CCC but all I can find is a similar option to detect manually, but no apparent way to set auto detection. The best it can do is auto detect when CCC is actually opened.

Grrrr..

 

Usually, your computer is going to use the settings it had last. It gets detected, but you'll have to switch to it yourself. Rather than right-clicking and taking the longer route, just use Windows Key + P and select whichever option you want. Fastest way, and imo, more convenient than having it automatically do it because you can choose a specific setup that way. Try it



Also, quick question. Does changing the wireless adapter change the mac address?

 

I know how to switch with Win key + P (or on the 4820TG, Fn+F5), but I'm just curious why the auto detect and switch has gone away. It's convenient because when I plug into my external monitor at school or at home, Windows has remembered the settings and even remembered which side to extend the display.

My main question is if this is normal after updating CCC to the recent version, or if there is a problem with my drivers or setup. I can live with this but just want to make sure everyone else has the same situation with the new CCC.

 

I'm having a bizarre problem, hopefully someone here can help.

Basically, I secure erased my hard drive through xubuntu via the terminal, and now when I boot the hard drive prompts me for a password, which has never happened before, nor have I ever set one for it. From what I can tell there is no way to disable this in the BIOS. When I tried to install windows on the clean drive, windows tells me it cannot be installed on the drive, which probably has to do with the fact I don't know the password.

Anyone know where I can find a password or how to get around this? It's bizarre.

Model: Aspire TimelineX 4820TG

 

We do not provide help on bypassing security measures as it's against forum rules.
Please contact Acer for assistance.

 

Hello all,

New member here and i was wondering if i could ask a question. Is there a way to force the system to use only the intel GPU no matter if it runs on battery or plugged in?

Thanks

 

You can right click, go to "configure switchable graphics" and select the intel GPU. However, I think that it will automatically switch GPUs when you connect to the power, anyways.

 

Try going into Device Manager --> Display Adapters --> Disable ATI card.

That might work.

 

It's in the BIOS settings, there will be an option to either have it be switchable or specify a graphics card.

 

My battery wear is pretty insane... Does anyone rock an 8cell battery?

 

9cell will cost like 50-100$

 

Worth it over the 6 cell? How much is a 6 cell?

 

Hello all and thanks for the answers.

@omni: i tried that but it changes back each time i unplug and plug the power.
@inm8#2: nice thinking... are we sure it will switch to internal if i disable the external or will i end up with no screen?
@HappyHappyMan: i searched the BIOS but i only find the option to choose between switchable and dedicated, not the internal one. Could it have been added in a later BIOS update? Do you have that option in your BIOS?

Thanks again.

 

Does anyone know where to get a caddy that fits nicely in the 4820tg?

 

Starback: Hm, I didn't realize. I'd only ever seen that option in passing, and I guessed that it might be it. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

In other news...

I have a huge problem right now with my AMD drivers. I installed the Catalyst 12.1 drivers mentioned earlier in the thread, and my fps NO MATTER WHAT has plummeted. In most cases, somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of what it was previously. I have exhausted every possible method of fixing it, system restores, etc. It doesn't even seem to fix itself if I roll back to a previous driver (I've even gone so far as to roll back to the OEM drivers, now nearly two years out of date). I'm at my wits' end, does ANYBODY have any ideas what to do?

 

Can you run GPU-Z, tab "Sensors" and check if the clocks are running at the max speed when you playing a game ?

 

You, sir, are a stone-cold genius, thank you so much! I have no idea why this update borked my clock speeds, though.