Multiple issues with Aspire 5102

Hey guys!

I recently purchased an Acer Apspire 5102 with the dual core AMD Turion64. Everything seemed great until I checked my hardware and found out that instead of the ATI Radeon xPress 1100, as listed under Acer specifications and as proven by the sticker on my computer, I had received the Radeon xPress 200m. In addition, Acer Arcade was missing as were the glossy black multimedia buttons advertised to be on the right of the keyboard. Do any of you know if Acer simply wrote the wrong specs on their website, or did my notebook just somehow got manufactored weird?

Thanks.

 

Hmm, that's really odd. I'd request an RMA from wherever you bought it. If they don't give RMAs, I'd send it to Acer and inquire as to what's going on. And send an email to the reseller too. Do that, and post the results. We'll see what happens and take it from there.

--Amol.

 

I've sent a couple of emails to acer tech detailing the situation. Now I'm waiting for the replies, hopefully tomorrow.

 

Whom did you buy this from? You'll most probably have to contact them too.

 

Which program did you use to check the specifications of he chipset/GPU. The X1100 is brand new and so many programs might no be updated to recognise the new solution.

 

try to get it exchanged with a new one, for the hardware problems. and if you want the acer arcade you can get it installed by using the software disk, that should come with the computer or the e= recovery tool. (not totally surehow to use it but it is supposed to install all of the factory components...) check the users guide in the "Acer system" in the start menu.

 

I bought it from Circuit City for a cheap $849 and a free printer, case, and router. ATI's own Catalyst software listed the GPU as a 200m, and PCMark05 did too. Acer's eRecovery doesn't have Arcade either, not to mention eLock, and some Disk thing that the manual said would be included. As of today, Acer hasn't replied to my email, so I'm gonna call them and ask.

 

Well, I called Acer tech support and it turns out the initial release notes for the system was completely wrong. The unit doesn't ship with Acer Arcade; instead it has PowerDVD, which is nothing compared with Arcade. Not only that, but the original marketing of the glossy black media keys on the right of the keyboard is also non-existent for the 5100 only. The 3100 has it, but the 5100 doesn't. It seems like Acer just copied the specs from the 3100 without changing them for the 5100.

About the GPU - I checked Acer's website, and it says to just download the newest drivers if the computer says the GPU is a 200m instead of the 1100. Problem is, those drivers don't exist yet, since the one they have on the website is the same one shipped with the comp. Weird. The tech guy said the comp is so new that they don't even have half the stuff to support it yet.

Now I'm running into another problem. Seems like everytime I go into sleep mode, I can't resume. The screen says "Window's Resuming" and then just goes blank. Now I have to shut down every time. Any help there?

Thanks.

 

Man, that's some weird tech support. Don't get me wrong, I like Acer machines and the support for the 5672 is really good. Well, I guess it will be straightened out and that it's just a matter of time.

Seems like your notebook is not hibernating properly. Try deleting the "hyberfil" file in C:. To view it, you must go to Tools -> Folder Options -> Click on "View" tab -> View hidden files and folders and also uncheck Hide protected Operating system file. Windows will recreate the file next time it hibernates.

 

> Seems like everytime I go into sleep mode, I can't resume.

Did you get sleep mode working again?
Sleep mode is really nice on laptops because you
can put the machine down and pop it open again and not
have to wait for boot, etc!

Do you think the new ATI drivers that correctly detect your 1100 chipset
vs the 200m are part of the problem? Have you tried rolling back to
the 200m drivers again? Which drivers are you using?
Got a link?

Have you tried many 3D apps or games yet. How hot does your laptop
get? I heard the 1100 is downclocked to 300mhz from the 1150.
Is it performing slower than the 200m?

How do you like the machine so far? Did you take all the extra junk software
off of it? Was thinking about getting one and installing from scratch
because there is so much garbage on there the one in the store doesn't
even work right when shutting down, etc.

Did you get an install disc with it? What are your main dislikes/likes.

Anyone else get one of these yet? On the fence. Would prefer a
x1400 or x1600 obviously but this laptop seems nice for a decent price.

 

X1600 is a Aspire 5110 line. Wondering if they did the same thing with messing its specs up on the site.

Not sure about in the States but the only version avaialble in canada for the 5110 is the 5112 which is the T50 processor with the x1600 video.

Wondering about the heat as well on these units since I am looking at the 5112 big brother to this one.

 

I bought the 5102 yesterday at a local Circuit City. I saw the same problems with the 200m and was told to get the newest chipset drivers. It is now recognizing the 1100 now just fine. The funny part is that when I went to delete the original drivers, it had drivers for the 200m and the 1600 in it. As far as the arcade, I didn't even know it came with it. Still not sure what the arcade is exactly. My understanding is that it is a media thing I am just fine with the Power DVD and the functions in MCE. If I need more, I am sure I can find it.

Anyways, as it stands, other than the little issue of the video drivers, no complaints. Mine is working fine and cool.

 

I'm writing a review for NBR that is almost finished. As to the speed of the ATI 1100, it is actually clocked at 100 mhz, not 300. I don't know if this is a mistake or what, but most games are running fine, except Doom3. FEAR was ok and wasn't choppy like Doom. It does get hot while playing games. The fan is constantly on. As to sleep, it seems to work/not work. I'd say it is spotty at 75% working/25% won't engage. Look for my review in the coming days.

 

Thats odd, where did you get the 100mhz from?
Have you seen this directly from ATI-
“The Radeon Xpress 1100/1150 IGPs feature a Radeon X300 graphics core clocked at 300Mhz (Xpress 1100) and 400MHz (Xpress 1150). Up to 128MB of memory can be allocated to the GPU thanks to ATI's HyperMemory technology. ”
What other games/apps have you tried?
How fast is openGL on the unit as 200m(shared version) struggled here.
Sent u an email.

 

I got the 100 mhz from benchmark software (i think PCMark05), and i think acer's own specs (on my computer) say 100. I might be wrong. I can't compare to the 200m because i never used on, but i am going to say that before i updated drivers, when the comp recognized my card as a 200, i got 2400 pc marks, and after updating to the 1100 drivers, i got 2413 marks. a slight improvement, however little.

 

I got Acer Arcade with it.

 

I'm guessing Acer recognized their mistake and decided to include it????? maybe.......

 

I think it's always the first stock that has trouble. They start fixing stuff as they release the newer batches - I think it holds true for anything and everything new.

 

Hi Kerry or anyone

Pls can you provide me with the URL to download the updated drivers to get
XP to recognise the graphics as 1100 instead of 200.

Also , can someone confirm if the 100Gb hard disk is PATA or SATA, as it appears that Acer has shipped some laptops with 5200RPM SATA's and others (probably the majority) with 5200RPM PATAs.

 

Have you tried ATI's site?

Get Everest Home Edition os SiSoft Sandrav and they should show you exactly what HDD you have

 

hi
5112 is realy good
near ther fan its get heat but only when u have the prosessor on maximum and computer is on fore more than 1 hr i think
it allso gets heat ner touchpad but not much
but i u put tha processor on minimum then its dosent gets heat

i was allso thing of buing 5102 but when i saw 5112 i bought 5112 beacuse of ther graphics card

 

Thanks Nicolin. I have tried ATI's site and can't find a specific chipset update for the problem I am experiencing.

 

go to Acer's support site to find the drivers. The latest is dated 7/25/2006. And the hard drives are 4200 RPM PATA's. they don't ship the 5400 with the Aspire 5102.

 

They do! I have it.

 

O wow, TBoy. That's good for you. lol. I guess the rest of us who bought early are stuck with a ****ty 4200 rpm hd. maybe I should've bought mine later, instead of the 2nd week it came out.

 

hello everyone,

a friend of mine bought the Acer 5102 deal from Circuit City today. I crossed this thread when I was googling the eRecovery software on the Acer. The sales rep at circuit city said that the computer did not come with any recovery software and did come with a Windows installation disc. I was brought along as "the computer guy". I highly doubted any reputible manufacture would do such a thing. I know my father's Vaio came with a recovery partition in which one had to build the CD and then burn it. When they took the laptop over to the tech desk I caught another Acer machine running its recovery software. the software was made by Acer. So then I found anoher laptop with the internet on it and went to Acer's website. discovered that by pressing Alt-F10 (or F11 cant remember) one could access the recovery management portion of the software. So my friend's mom paid $30 for them to do what? Run recovery cd creation software that was already on the computer (although we were told that it was not) and run windows update which one could run on one's own?

Circuit City might be an OK place to by computer but beyond purchasing the warranty I would never have any work done by their or Best Buy's "geeks". Most of the work is basic and people can run it themselves.

This is why I do not like shopping at large electronics retailers...they have a hord of sales rep ready to swarm on the electronically illiterate....

just warning ya,

Kris

 

Hi folks
I'm new here so please go easy on me.

My daughter saved her hard earned money and bought me a Circuit City gift card for my birthday. (I had mentioned a long time ago that I would love a Notebook some day).
What a nice suprise!

I bought this 5102WLMi and I was so excited.
However, the first one wouldn't boot after the second day...had to bring it back. (I tried everything including recovery from disk, DVD etc)

And the nearest Circuit City from me is 45 Minutes away...not a good start to my excitement.
Anyway, to make a long story short, they determined the HDD was bad, and gave me a new Computer. (I got the same model because what little I saw I liked).

Now, I'm just feeling pretty discouraged.

First, as others have mentioned, even thought the sticker says "Radeon Express 1100", the ATI Catalyst Control Center shows as "200m".

A couple of people have said "just go to the ATI web site and get new drivers", but I searched EVERYWHERE there and can't find what I should download.

Could someone post a direct link to the exact driver I need by any chance???
And I'm assuming there is just a specific Driver that I can point to in device manager to update it, and I don't have to upgrade the entire catalyst control center right? (Like I said, I'm new so please go easy on me).

The other thing I noticed is the first couple of days the Fan would only come on rarely.
Now, it seems to cycle on and off about every couple of minutes or so (and this is without doing anything but surfing the web).

Is this normal?
It's not that it's that loud, but it didn't seem to come on as often the first day, so I don't know if something is already going bad with the fan or cooling.
(It seems to stay cool enough).

I'm new to Laptops but not desktops so I'm not totally ignorant, but I'm no computer wizard either.
I'm just feeling pretty discouraged and wondering if I made the right choice.

These things scare me a little...I can fix things on my Desktop, but a Laptop is a whole different animal for sure, and there is only so much one can do if something breaks.

Could anyone help me out?
Especially with the specific GPU Driver I need to have it show correctly in the Control Center?

Thanks so much for any help you can offer.

If something goes terribly wrong with this second unit, I may give up on my laptop dream and buy a stereo or something.

PS I'm very sorry for the long post...I'll try to keep them shorter in the future.

 

OK....Thanks anyway guys.
While I was waiting for a reply I finally found the driver and it's showing as an 1100 now the way it should.

And I guess the fan issue is normal.

My machine doesn't seem to get hot at all the way some others have mentioned.

All in all, I guess I'm liking this thing the more I use it.
Sure hope the hard Drive last longer than the first one did though. (1 Day)

Now I've got to google some of the startup items....it's nuts how many there are right now.

Later!

 

I Got this laptop recently too and I'm nothing but happy with it. Its not the greatest on graphics but I can run most of my stuf at low to moderately high settings. TheNut you said you found the drivers did you get the ones from the Acer site or from ATI specifically?

Also out of curiosity if there are any others that are playing games on it curious to know what games youre playing to know how they run.

 

I bought a 5102 from Circuit City yesterday and I am facing the GPU driver problem too but I think I can solve that one. However, if I attach a headphone to the laptop, only the right side is playing sound. Even when I test the 2 channels using Media Center, only 1 channel works. Has anyone else faced the same problem?

 

with 533 ram I play hl2 at 800*600 med settings and I get an average of 30 fps using fraps. the same setup scored 1350 on 3dmark03. I ordered 2 gigs of 667 ram so im gonna report back in as to how much this improves game play (faster gpu and more ram as I think hl2 is really maxing out my ram thus running slower)

 

AMD Fan: if you go to acer's page you can get the latest drivers, I was more curious what we're going to do if Acer doesn't keep them updated.

Adinu: out of curiousity how much was the 2 gigs of ram? I deffinately would like to hear back how well it does. I have the model with gig of ram.

 

I got OCZ value ram, 82 dollars each from newegg. They have 8 bux off in rebate, so its gonna end up costing 76 for each.

Yeah, it should do a little better considering that hl2 takes a lot of memory, and with the shared ram its streching it. Also, the 667 ram should give me quite a boost in gpu peformance. Its gonna increase the gpu ram clock from 533 to 667, which is quite a decent bump. Too bad we cant increase the core clock also...

 

Forgive me my understanding of laptops is very limited. How is that going to boost the GPU exactly because of more Ram being available? or are you changing something in the bios or over clocking this via omega drivers

 

Its gonna make it better in 2 ways:

1)The amount of ram I have right now is almost not enough for the game to run well. By buying more ram, the game can utilize as much as it wants and not limit itself because its running out of ram. Out of the 890mb i have left, the game is using upwards of 700 while minimized, and when actually playing it takes more so it needs more ram.

2)Since this is a shared ram gpu, the gpu memory clock is the same as the regular system ram. Normal dedicated gpus have a core clock and a memory clock on their ram. But the xpress1100 uses system ram, so it has its own core clock just like any other gpu, but its memory clock is whatever the system uses (aka 533 stock). Turions can use up to 667 ram, so by placing that ram in the computer, the gpu will now use 667mhz ram to do work, instead of 533mhz ram thus a good improvement in performance.

Pple do ths all the time with dedicated gpus, they overclock the core and memory to gain performance, but in integrated gpus u cant do this. The best u can do is provide it with faster ram.

 

wow thanks adinu!

 

Hi! For several days I was studying this laptop... I've been all over the internet to find some mor info about it caouse it seems to great to me...

Now I have a question:

Is it better to buy Acer 5110 for it's ATI X1300 graphic card but 512 DDR2 system memory, or to buy Acer 5100 with ATI Xpress 1100, which has shared memory, and with 1024 Mb of system memory?

What would you suggest? Would it be a much of a differnece, cause I love that Acer 5100 has 1024 MB of RAM, and I was going to buy that one, but I just don't know if the difference would be big between this 2 models and which one would appear better.

Tnx

 

The x1300 is a much better graphic then the xpress 1100. And the lack of ram is not a problem, for 35 bux u can buy another stick of ram and put it in there and u got a gig of ram just like the 5100 series.

 

I never had a problem runing graphics on this pc.

I run Americas Army, and a bunch of demos from gamespot and works perfectly.

I do however have 2GB installed, this unit usually comes with 1GB installed. Don't know if that makes a differ tho.

 

Hi everybody!
I notice the same change of behavior on my laptop too..
It doesn´t rise more than 40 °c, but the fan was nearly everytime off until lasts three days ago.
How is it going now by you?

 

with ubuntu 6.10 I had to add a line in my /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base:

options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=3

have a look also in the bugtrack system of alsa

ciao

 

The 5102 has a Radeon Express 1100. This card is usually shown as a 200 in older ATI drivers. The newer Catalyst drivers correctly show the X1100. This is not a hardware issue, it is a driver misidentifying issue. The x1100 is newer than the driver so the driver does not identify it properly.
Don't request an RMA. Download an update.