Problem with Acer 5560 after clean install

hi All,

got my acer 5563 and believe it to be good value for money. i upgraded to 2GB ram on purchase using Kingston memory.

I did a clean install of Win XP Pro SP2, then applied all latest drivers supplied by Acer. In a couple of case I used later versions direct from manufacturer (eg Intel chipset and wireless). Have since applied all latest patches from microsoft. The only acer util I am using is Launch Manager.

Notebook recognises all devices and works very snappily ... boot up in under 30 seconds.

However, I have one consistent problem. I regularly get application errors popping up. Windows detects them and closes the offender gracefully. They always mention trying to access an area of memory that the shouldnt be. Initially I though RAM issue so had that swapped out, with no change. Although not consistent, I often get these errors when coming out of screen saver/standby. Often I will get a string of them, but if I reboot they go away. I did one reinstall, using the same drivers etc and same problem.

At this point in time I am suspicious of drivers, but am at a bit of a loss. I have searched MS knowledge for every instance of errors I have in event log, but the answers that come up are useless and too general.

Any advice and suggestions appreciated.
Thanks

 

I've got 3 things to suggest for you. The first being to run memtest86+ off of a CD-R overnight to check for any errors. Download it here - http://www.memtest.org/ Use the CD or Floppy version, both work great.


The second thing I'm going to suggest is that you run diagnostics on your laptop hard drive. Depending on the manufacturer go to their main website and download their software and burn it to a cd / floppy and run that as well. If you turn up any errors such as bad sectors or corrupt info it could be a possible bad hard drive.

The last thing i'm going to suggest is that you take a look into your computer management even viewer. Check to see what applications keep hanging (the .exe's ) and determin if it's a software issue to a specific peice or item, or if it is various peices of software across the board.

Look below for what I'm talking about



Microsoft Word hung for me last night when I was ALT + TABBED out of BF2. Simple fix, but you can use this to narrow down your possible problems and solutions.


--ssx--

 

hi ssx, thanks for the reply.

I actually ran memtest on the first 2 sticks i had ... every 3rd run would report an error hence the change of sticks. Ran it twice after the change with no errors.

Havent yet tried the drive check but will try to do so.

As to the error messages, I had already checked them and found no consistency. As I mentioned in my post, when I do this, I usually get a string of error messages. Once i reboot all is well, until i leave the notebook for a while eg goes into screen saver or standby ... I have often not been using the notebook, and noticed it come out of screen saver mode with one of these error messages.

One though I had was to install back to factory using dvd rescue and then use it for a while like this to see if problem still there. If not, then it suggests something to do with driver versions or antivirus i use (kaspersky 6). Tried doing a reinstall, and got to the very last step in restore before 1st reboot and it complained about missing file, which I dont have.

Update:
downloaded Hitachi utils and fully tested drive ... no problems ... back to the drawing board :-(