Aspire 5920G - Recovery Disk, D drive questions and restore points

Hello everyone,

Im only just burning the factory DVD restore of my system via Acer eRecovery Management. I should have done this a long time ago right when I first recieved my laptop. What ends up on the factory restore DVD?

Another question, my laptop really has noticably slowed down since purchase. I know this is natural...especially as I currently have lots of games installed...only 9GB currently free on C.

This free space varies drastically day to day as restore points seem to automatically be generated by vista. I think this automatically takes place when vista downloads and installs updates. How can I change this? It's annoying as I have a consitently fluctuating amount of free space on C..I frequently delete these points using Tune Up Utilities 2008 which brings me back to the norm.

Also, the D partition seems like a huge waste of space to just leave as it is. There are 103GB free on this partition with only two windows folders existing on there. I have never touched this partition thinking it is there only for disaster situations, like if vista dies and wants to make an image of itself here.
Is this correct or can I move other files onto this partition? Will this increase performance?

Im just trying to increase the speed of my laptop day to day workings. My girfriend was saying that the D partition can maybe be somehow partitioned to speed up the laptop? I dont really understand that though! hhaa

Thanks everyone.

 

I have to two partitions, C: and D:. I use the C: for system stuff e.g. windows program files etc, then i use the D: for personal stuff like music, photo's etc. This way if i need to reinstall vista i won't lose any of my personal stuff.

It is safe to save onto this drive, and I think acer sets it up with 2 partitions for the reasons I do this, so as not to lose my data in case of a re-install. It may be worth moving some of your data over to there now and free up some space, then do a disk cleanup, get rid of temp files etc.

Have a look at this thread, real good tips and tweaks guide (Vista), may help you speed things up a little: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

 

RWR123, the factory restore DVD is basically an image of your system's hard drive as you received it from the factory. It'll clear off your C: drive and set it back to factory default, while leaving everything on D: untouched.

Thus, as bangert said, you should move your music, photos, videos, and documents over to D: so they'll be safer. It's not for disaster situations - Acer set it up so you could put your personal stuff on it!

You could always turn off System Restore if it annoys you so much, but I'd advise against that. It means that you'd be losing one of your main safeguards against system failure and muckuppery.

How is it slow, anyway? We might be able to suggest some things in that regard. Download and run CPU-Z, and tell us the "Size" value on the Memory tab. A RAM upgrade might be in order.

 

Hi sorry for the late reply and thanks for support.

Ive moved work files over and got rid of a lot of useless installed games I wasnt playing. Got me back into the blue in the C space.

All of my itunes files (mp3s etc) are on external but all the itunes log files etc are on c. Will leave those there as moving the whole lot is blatently gonna skrew my library. Itunes is quite sensitive when it comes to this stuff ...eek

In terms of it being slow..I have noticed following things...Maybe this has to do with my recent install of my spyware client ''Spyware doctor'' but to be honest with you I just think its something else....

After double clicking windows...it takes about a minute for the explorer to find and display the drives and folders. It used to be BANG loaded. No more.

Opening Itunes takes....well a while...and the loading of art work after selecting an album is quite delayed. It used to be insantly displayed. I do have almost 140GB of music but why would it only recently start to slow down.

Opening firefox to open a webpage can be quite slow too. No connection problems. Just getting itself in gear before displaying the drives takes a bit.

I have 2048MB DDR2 ram. Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4GHZ and potentially 250GB HDD

Ive tryed defrag and registry clean up too from Tune Up Utilities and it reckons I dont need to do it! Maybe a full on windows external defrag would sort me out.

Any tips?

I really dont like the idea of spending money on more ram.

Its just crazy how with time the system has slowed down.

Cheers in advance.

 

Just noted there is a more recent version of bios for the 5920G available too

1.3813 is available...would help at all or am I wasting my time?

In addition...what acer software can I happily delete from C. This voice recognition software pops up at start up these days. If I can install that too...would that be okay. Or do I then lose mic ability of recording.

By the way...how the hell do you access the mic options on vista? Like sound recorder...where is that?

Cheers

 

For the defragging, try JKDefrag,

The mic options should be in realtek sound option, double click the little speaker icon on the bottom left.

Have you done a disk cleanup aswell, may help you a bit.

 

When the system slows down, hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up Task Manager, and look at the amount of Physical Memory Used.
If it's near 100%, it's time for a memory upgrade.
Vista likes 2GB, but loves 3GB or more.