New Laptop: Acer Extensa 4420-5237

I updated the BIOS on this laptop from v1.17 to v1.18 and I still can't find any options in the BIOS to control the fan. How are you guys able to turn it off?

 

there is NO way to control an ACER's fan... the BIOS set's an ON point and an OFF point.... but the BIOS and the APCI are in total control of the fan.

all you can do is sit back and monitor the temps using one of the many available hardware monitoring programs available for free!

 

Various people, and an Acer tech told me that there was an option to get into fan properties to turn it on and off.

 

let us know when and where you find it.... PLEASE

 

The Fan Info is coded into the BIOS, which can be altered by hacking the ACPI, which in turn is not accessible through a BIOS Editor.

Fans cannot be controlled at the program level.

 

just snagged a extensa 4420-5963. can anyone link me to a pin mod guide? been doing some hunting and can't find anything but pin mods for Pentium M's. CPU is an athlon64 x2 tk-57 1.9ghz, an extra 3-400mhz would be spiffy. just popped off the bottom case and the CPU is right there for easy access.

 

hello guys

I am interested buying this laptop. Does anyone tried the battery ? how long can it keep the computer running?

thxn in advance

 

i just made my backup discs and am going to go down to xp pro. one thing i need to know is where are you guys getting this "omega" driver and is it for audio? thats the only real thing im worried about is that omega driver.

thanks a lot
B

 

has anyone put on test the battery of this model ? please help...

 

anyone had this for more than 8 months or so, how well does it work?

 

What's the battery life like on this?

 

Wanted to install 32GB SSD on it. No luck
Bios shows drive name, but the serial number field has bunch of crap displayed.
Tried different bios versions, but that didn't help.
It simply hangs after the POST.

The SSD is Partriot 32GB. I use it with my desktop for now...

If anyone has any idea what can be done for it to work with 4420, please let me know.

Thanks

 

Acer Extensa 4420, AMD Athlon dual core, 1.9 GHz, 2GB RAM and an ATI Radeon Xpress 1250, purchased for 376$ before tax at BB.

its a good laptop, great for the price, but i do have a couple gripes.

firstly, the built in mouse buttons and touchpad are crap.
low quality, and way too small.

secondly, the built in ATI Radeon has an unsatisfactory amount of options.
i mean, i installed riva tuner and couldnt even modify the digital vibrance.

overall, excellent laptop.
just make sure to buy a mouse.

-sh4rdik

EDIT: wow guys, chill out about the fan. this is the cheapest laptop youl ever buy, and thats what your complaining about? also, whos bright idea was it to turn the system fan off?? thats just silly.

 

Ok here's my problem. My girlfriend bought this laptop last night with vista home prem, I immediately reformated to Windows XP x64, problem is, I didn't back anything up, ANYTHING. I figured hey, it's a new pc, name brand, so i can just go to their site and download the xp drivers, well as luck would have it, they didn't have anything, save for maybe one unimportant driver, for this, and i'm running on one leg with it, i don't have their signalup drivers for the WLAN, or the Integrated NIC, don't have the ATI Xpress Radeon 1250 drivers either, where can I get all this or if possible can someone rar a copy of them and send them to my email [email protected]?

 

I'm running rmclock on my 4420-5239 and I get over 3 hours of power. I'd get more if it went idle every now and then. Running dual 800mhz cpu's at around .8v increases my power by a bit longer. Without rmclock I'd be a little over 2 hours. My usual usage is office + web stuff so nothing cpu intensive.

BTW my fan is going off every 30 seconds even if its pretty idle. I still don't know why.

 

Assuming you only formatted the c drive then the backup vista partition is still there. You can boot off that partition if you turn on your laptop and hold down alt + f10. It'll beep a couple times and something that looks like a minimal vista will pop up with 3 options.

 

I bought this for my sister at my local BB last week for three99! before tax.
For a low-budget laptop this is great!

When I first got it I made the recovery dvds and then did a fresh install of vista since I didn't have an xp. I wiped out everything b4 installing vista again.

Once installed, I tweaked vista(indexing, auto. defrag, startup, visual appeal,...) I removed acers power manager. And now it runs like a champ.
It get about 2:30 hrs of battery life but I believe the fan does turn on but it is not loud enough for me to really notice or pay attention too.

Overall I am really please. I was thinking of putting in a Patriot ssd like bartus1 but after seeing his post I just keep it that way it is.

 

I just bought this exact model 3 weeks ago. Besides the optical drive having issues, which the seller apologized and is working on getting a replacement drive shipped to me, i can't gripe at all. I don't even notice any issues with the fan. Heck i don't even notice when the fan's on or not! Only thing that gets hot is the hard drive.

I used to gripe about Vista but so far, it seems to work sweet on this system so i'm leaving it on. Tried Fedora 8 but i had some post install problems so moved to Ubuntu 8.10 instead and so far so good. I've been trying to install Mac OSX using some of the modified builds but I've had no luck thus far. Won't even boot up to the GUI install. Anyone else have any luck?

 

How can I update the BIOS on my laptop from v1.17 to v1.18 I downloaded the file & am completely lost. HELP!!!

 

Excellent question. I have been wondering the same. Can anyone walk us through how to do this?

 

Head to the following website: http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/ex_4420.html

Bios files are there.

 

Hi,
I just bought this laptop with following config. last night as the price was really attractive. I am not planning to use this for heavy gaming but would use for streaming online vidoes, light games (kids games for my son), browsing and other office programs. What I would like to know is, based on specs below will this be an ideal laptop for $450. I dont mind spending another $50 if the market can offer C2D with other specs being same.
AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Tech TL-64 2GHz
3 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive
1408 MB ATI Radeon X1250 Graphics HyperMemory
5-1 card reader, Svideo, 4X USB, firewire, ir port, blue tooth (switch-no hardware)
So far I seem to like it but I have no knowledge of processors and which ones are best in market.
Thanks for any information

 

Is anyone else unable to download from the Acer support web site? I'm trying to get BIOS v1.18 from http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/ex_4420.html but it either times out or downloads a corrupt ZIP. Ideas? Anyone have a link to the v1.18 BIOS on another web server?

 

Wait for a bit and give it a try again. ACER ftp sucks big time, it's very slow and I think when there are more people connected it just can't handle the traffic demand and timeouts.

 

Quick question. I wonder if anyone elses 4420 gets hot on the right bottom side when on a table, etc? My Mom's Lenovo can be put on the table and after an hour the bottom is still cool, while my 4420 gets really hot. Any ideas? Thank you.

 

that is where the hard drive is, so yes it would get hot if you are accessing the hdd alot.

 

Okay, thank you. Also, it says indexing is off, what is that?

 

yea, i noticed the ftp was timing out. i still haven't been able to get the bios update downloaded. grr.

 

Hey all. I've had this computer for almost a year and love it. I have had no problems until yesterday. The problem that I had was actually Windows related and not with the hardware...according to Acer tech support.

While surfing the web, the computer froze. The cursor moved with the touch pad but would do nothing on the screen. No keys on the keyboard worked. I powered down with the power button and when I started back up, once it got to the user log in screen, it froze again. This time, neither the keyboard nor touchpad worked. I tried to reboot in safe mode, but it was the same way. I tried an external USB keyboard and mouse and they did nothing. What I did discover is that I could go into the Recovery app and both the keyboard and touch pad worked. The Acer Tech said that a bad battery or wireless air card could possibly be the culprit. I don't have an "air" card and removing the battery did not help. He then said that the only choice I have is to use the recovery app and start over with a clean slate. I don't want to do this except as a last resort. I have backed up many photos, music and documents but not everything and I don't want to lose them. Unfortunately, these are all on the partition with the OS. (I won't make that mistake again!)

First off does anyone have any suggestions about what I can try? What I am considering is buying a new hard drive and an enclosure and putting the new hard drive in the computer and putting the old one in the enclosure and using it as an external drive. What are the odds that if I do this, I can access my folders? Will the Windows screw up prevent me from getting to the folders? I don't have much technical experience with laptops or hard drives and I don't want to spend the money for the new drive and enclosure, if I'll end up having to reformat the old drive (and lose the files anyway) to use it as an external.

I appreciate any ideas out there. Thanks!

Rob

 

I would download a registry cleaner and run it. I have had good luck with AML and with regseeker.

 

My acer Extensa 4420-5237 crashed and i setup windows xp professional(it originally had Windows Vista). everything is working fine except the audio. It seems the driver i downloaded from the www.acer.com website isn't working.

Does anyoneof you guys know where i can find the correct driver for my laptop??? I need your help.

 

Try this one:
ftp://ftp.work.acer-euro.com/notebook/extensa_4420/driver/Audio%20Realtek%20v.5.10.0.5423.zip

If it doesn't work try this one:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

By the way, do you have the SMBus driver(chipset) installed?

 

hi i have the 4420-5910 and the battery life seems pretty weird. Once using without the power plug, it'll say 2hrs life and within 5min, it'll say 1hr and 5mins left. I used the laptop for online streaming/surfing and the battery life is very short on the "balanced life". Do u guys have this problem? I'm wondering is there a solution or fix to this problem before I contact Acer and I only had this laptop since Jan 09.

 

Hi Folks! I have a 4420-5808 – XP/AMD flavor. Had a problem, tried the restore disks – no joy. Acer, useless. Had a "legit" spare Vista HP disk and got it running faster than the XP with Vista “dumbed down”.
According to Device Mgr. and Driver Detective I’m missing the Network Controller and Wireless driver. I tried the Lan Marvel 10.12.83 from both panam and eu acer sites and received “Internal Error 2753.InstallU.exe. Tried Lan Broadcom driver 10.9.0.0 - another error msg. Haven’t even tried the wireless. Can someone tell me exactly what I’m doing wrong or what I'm looking for and point me to the download site?
Thanks for the help!
Lanz

 

Hi

I had to reinstall Vista on my laptop and now my wireless card is not working. I installed all the drivers that I got of the acer web site. Every time I try to install the LAN Marvall I get a message that the wireless card is not plugged in. Also every time I run the LAN Marvell setup i get a message "Internal error 2753.InstallU.exe" Can someone help me with this issue.

Thank you

 

TANKERX: Have you timed it to see how long the battery actually lasts? I've gotten a good 1:30 hours on my Acer while watching a video. I would think you would get at least that if not more if your surfing/streaming.

Try tweaking the power settings

 

UCZEN13: Are you using the restore discs/partition or a retail copy of Vista?

 

Hi,
Has anyone soled the problem with the fan?
I mean about the noise it makes.
No ideas?

 

ok so i have had this laptop since october of 08 and didnt have any problems untill recently. i have noticed that when in powersaver my battery will go down to about 45-50% or about 50 mins left and will suddenly drop to 3% and shut off and the battery really is that low. is this because of a short or something in the battery? also i am able to play videogames on here and i usually have no problem but i have been starting to have problems with lag on an internet game (combat arms) but not all the time only when it gets hot and even then its intermittint. any way to fix either of these?

 

Lately i'm starting to have overheating issues on my Acer 4420. It was always on a hard surface (sits on my desk at work) and was fine until about 3weeks ago.

Noticed it with Windows 7 first with just general web browsing (would shut down after an hour, sometimes longer). I switched to my Ubuntu install and was very stable, wouldn't shut down.

Now i'm noticing it in Ubuntu with handbrake when i tried to encode a short video for my iPod. (Kills after 4 minutes)

Temp gauges level at around 55-60C when not in use on both cores but jacks up to 90+C once the encoder runs (right now it's at 97C).

I'm figuring i probably need to apply more thermal paste but does anyone have any other ideas or had similiar problems in the past?

The CPU fan is working and revs up once i start encoding. it's not noisy or anything so i don't think the fan itself is damaged.

 

***Video controller help needed***

I recently reformatted the hard drive and the only thing I can't get re-installed is the video controller. I've tried the driver from the Acer American site, the Euro site and just about every site I could find referenced in any thread. Everything else on the machine is running fine but every time it boots up I get the message that the video controller needs to be installed and my display resolution is limited to 1024X768.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike.

 

Problem resolved. I found a video driver from 2007 and used that and everything is fine now.

 

Well good news is i'm still running my Extensa 4420, cleared the overheating issues a while back (was actually dust lodged into the vent) I also added some more thermal paste on top of the core so it's running fine again, and i have a nice cooling fan running under the unit when i have it at my desk at work or table at home.

Now i'm thinking of upgrading it a bit more. The TL-66 (AMD Turion 64x2 2.3ghz) CPU has come down in price and i've seen it on eBay for about $80 new. From what i've read this is the max CPU it can take.

I have 4GB of RAM installed already and i'm running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and Ubuntu 10.4 64 Bit. I know Acer states 4GB is the max, but i'm wondering if anyone has tried installing 2 4GB modules in the unit and if they've been successful?

I'm also debating on upgrading the Wireless G to a Wireless N module. Any success stories, recommended modules?

Also wondering if anyone has tried installing a Blu-Ray drive. Since the interface is IDE we're a little restricted on older drives.

I've found 3 possibilities: Panasonic UJ-120, SONY BC-5500A, Panasonic UJ-225 (Slot Loading)

I'm tempted on the slot loader but it is a bit pricier on eBay.

Anyone have any experiences to share?