TM 8204WLMi Problem

Hi,

I just bought one of these and have been playing around with it a few days... Unfortunately i somehow have turned off the touchpad and cannot get it back on no matter what. I even tried downloading the 8200 touchpad driver from the acer support site and the installing it again but to no avail. Although i have been using a microsoft standard wireless optical mouse with the laptop it was not a problem when i first plugged it in and the touchpad was fine. Only recently has it turned itself off... from what i recall it wouldnt work after i took it off the screen saver....dunno if its anything to do with that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

if its anything like the aspire 3003,try pressing and holding the "Fn" key and pressing F7 key.

 

I tried it and although it does say touchpad disabled and touchpad enabled it actually has no effect. I dont think windows recognises it anymore... any more ideas ?

 

:/ Nope sorry, im far from a laptop expert, just a newbie here, all I can think of is ensure it's not disabled in the system device manager, but im sure you have already checked that.

Hope you solve it

 

Try to re-install the touchpad drivers.

 

You might have noticed my recent post... i have the exact same problem. My touchpad no longer works and re-installing the driver did not help. I dont want to send it to Acer cause it will take forever and i use USB mouse anyway... but its the fact that it has been 4 weeks and something went wrong... However i am hopeful that after full-system reinstallation that i will do at the end of june everything will get back to its right place...

 

I actually tried using the recovery disk to return it to factory settings but things have turned from bad to worse and now i cannot boot into windows... nothing seemed to go wrong during the process but when it rebooted i get the message:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.>
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I have tried to boot it through the recovery disk but this i think just does the process again and restarts with the same error.

I have read that you can repair the "boot.ini" file somehow if you have an Windows XP disk to boot your computer with... unfortunately as we know acer doesnt provide one.

I do not know what to do? should i try to get hold of a XP disc and repair it... would it be possible to start afresh and reinstall windows? im sure i read somewhere you cant on acer laptops due to something with the drivers?

Thanks in advance!

 

Nah, you can do a fresh copy of Winders on it without the restore disks. Just download the appropriate drivers.

Intel:
Chipset - i945PM
WLAN - 3945abg
LAN - PRO/1000 PM

Modem: Agere Systems HDA (from Acer)
Video: ATI X1600 (from Acer or omegadrivers.net)
Bluetooth: Broadcom 2045 (from Acer)
Infrared: National Semiconductor Fast Infrared (from Acer)
Smartcard: O2Micro SmartCardBus Smartcard Reader (from Acer)
Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio (from Realtek)

ftp.support.acer-euro.com

 

Thanks for the info clintb.

Could someone talk me through the process or point me in the direction of a noob guide to taking everything off the computer and reinstalling everything from scratch. Note that i get the error message after the acer screen (where there is a press f2 for setup)

Just the type of thing i would do... get a new computer and kill it within days

 

OK, dont worry, its really easy. Start up your computer and insert a Windows Professional XP SP2 CD. By teh time you put it inside and it recognizes the cd, you will probably hit the error message again so restart the computer... Wait for the laptop to recognize the Windows cd and follow the on-screen instructions. Basically, resize your partitions to whatever you need, format everything into NTFS, and seriously... just follow the on-screen instructions. its really easy. then when everything is done, install the proper drivers and enjoy the power of the system. lolzzz

 

Thanks its very reassuring that you said its easy.

Questions

Acer has all that backup stuff on the hard drive right? hence no windows cd... and since my recovery cd obviously doesnt work does that mean i will have no use for it and starting afresh will be the best idea for me ?

Partitions, are they litterally what the name suggest?... barriers you can set on your hard drive to split it. What use will they be to have and how big should they be ? Should i format the drive to NTFS or FAT32 which was what acer had it?

As i dont have a windows xp disc would i be able to download it and burn it onto cd and use that legally. I recall reading that if you have a product key for windows it works with any disc. Is this true ?

This may be jumping the gun but if and when i get the computer back to its normal state would i be able to make my own Restore Cd/dvd ?

Thanks

 

Once you do a fresh install of Windows on your machine, the restore CD that you created will become useless. It only works with FAT32 format and if there is a recovery partition... the recovery will be gone and your disks will be NTFS... but u dont really need it.
What you do is get a copy of XP Professional... that is the biggest problem i think. A new one is expensive...
Partitions are barriers in fact. You have an option of breaking up your hard drive into several partitions. Usually this is what you would have: one partition for windows files and a sawp file (approximately 10 to 20 GB), one partition for games/bulky software/videos (80GB???) and one for restore/whateverelse you want... thats how i have them set up. All of the partitions need to be NTFS.
You can create a new recovery cd once you do a fresh install. Just dont forget to download all the drivers before you wipe your system Or you will be left with an expensive paperweight. ha ha.

 

Hrmm get a copy of XP (anywhere) and run the recovery console from it. THat should fix your problem.
the command is chkdsk /r

Also if you want to start again without the Acer software installed you can use this method NoteBookForums on how to use a downloaded version of XP pro with the batch key on the bottom of the laptop.

 

I actually ran recovery from the hard driver using ALT F10 whilst at the acer screen... i guess there was something wrong with the recovery disk made.

Thanks for all the replies