The Acer 5102 Thread

I have played C.O.D on my 5102 and I was getting way more than 4fps so I don't know what is your issue there. Perhaps you could make sure that your fan intake(on the bottom of your notebook) is clean of dust or debris as that can slow the system down.

However on the openGl issue the Xpress 1100 graphics processor is very poor when it comes to any sort of openGl. This is something that was known for quite sometime but no matter what drivers ATI release the problem is never fixed. So I guess you will have to learn to live with it...

 

Thx Evo.
I cleaned my cooling systems last week when i noticed the fps drops problems playing Guild Wars.

Yes, i agree with your point of view. I've tried to discovery some solutions but with no progress. I think i need to wait for ATI's drivers that fix this problem, but hopeless i dont think they will work on this vga anymore.

Thx got yout help.
cincerly.

 

The OpenGL doesn't seems to be drivers related. It should be BIOS related. I don't know if the video BIOS is updated by ATI or Acer. One thing I know for sure: I will never buy another computer with ATI adapters. their OpenGL is always lacking and some adapters are forgotten when some solution is needed.

 

I got myself a 5102, i played lord of the rings online, which is a pretty big game. I could run this at very high textures. But since 2 days it is fps lagging, even when i turn the textures down to the lowest graphics.. Any help on this?

Btw , im running a ATI X1300, not sure if you guys new that

 

can you make clockgen keep its settings everytime boot up your notebook:i set my cpu speed to 2.4mhz with my tl-64 but when i shut down and boot up again my cpu speed is back to normal ive a 5102 so can i make it keep its settings the same everytime i boot up my laptop

 

My 5102 won’t start Windows XP of any kind!

It started after I plugged external hard drive into a USB port which is located next to the vent, something that was a routine for me. The first thing that happened was appearance of vertical color lines on the screen and no respond from input devices. After waiting for a minute, I did a shutdown and restart with the power button. Now:

1. After I power up, Windows XP is loading for 10 seconds, then hangs on the startup screen. I can feel increased heat coming out from the vent. Safe mode is similar, loading drivers for 10 seconds, then hangs and more heat. In both cases, after some time, 5102 shutdowns it self, probably a protection mechanism from increased temperature.

2. Pressing ALT+F10 starts the Windows XP from the hidden partition, but only for 2 seconds after which it hangs. Increased heat coming from the vent.

3. Recovery DVDs. After loading 1st DVD (about 15 seconds) to the RAMDISK, it hangs on “Please wait”. Normal heat coming out from the vent.

4. Loading retail Windows XP. It starts to load the CD, but hangs on “Starting Windows”. Increased heat coming from the vent.

Any advices?

 

I have never come across a situation like the one that you currently have. If for instance windows became corrupted then you should be able to reinstall it without the issues you are currently seeing.

Perhaps something hardware based has broken on your 5102 but I cannot say this for sure. But it is strange that windows cannot load and freezes when you try to reinstall it.

 

Hi! Last week I decided to format my Windows partition, in order to install a new, clean copy of Windows XP Pro. I currently have these partitions:

- Acer Recovery (Primary)
- Windows MCE (NTFS, Primary)
- Stuff (FAT32, Primary

- Extended:

- /boot (ext2, Secondary)
- Swap (Secondary
- / (ext3, Secondary)
- /home (ext3, Secondary)​

I turned on my laptop and inserted my XP Pro CD. The usual message of "Press any key to boot from CD" appeared. I pressed a key, and here's when I was clueless.

Instead of the normal blue screen the installation should show, the screen turned blank. The CD stopped spinning, and the HDD led started blinking continuously.

I waited several minutes (about 5). The screen remained blank, and the HDD continued working. As a result, I found out that the only way to reinstall Windows was by the recovery partition, or DVDs.


Does anybody know what is causing this problem? I believe it has something to do with the recovery partition, which might "confuse" XP installation a bit.


Thanks in advance!


Pepo

 

It's look like a problem with your optical unit or support clean both of them and/or try with another copy.
Let me know.

 

Thanks for the idea, Victor, but the optical unit works OK, as well as my Windows XP Pro CD. I tried installing Windows Vista, and that did work, but I really want a clean XP installation, not a Vista one.

Greetings,

Pepo

 

The second idea to make you save time :
Make an image of your disc with any descent disc imaging software. And the try to delete the windows MCE partition and if it not work the acer recovery, until you find wich one causing trouble. Otherwhile search deeper in the forum cause your issue sound like familiar to me but I do not remenber where it was.

 

Hi, I have had the 5102 for a while now and i was wondering if anyone else is having this problem with their computers....

When I close the lid, it would go into hibernate but sometimes when i turn it back on, it seems like the computer boots up and stuff but the screen stay blank. I have no idea what causes this. It only happens sometimes...so i would just put it back to sleep and press the power button again and it would come on just fine....

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! =)

 

Hello, just to say that I have that problem too .. though when i re-close and open the lid it goes away ... no idea either however what causes it.

On another point, can any of you please tell me which of the Acer utilities you took off? for example, did you take off all except e-recovery as this is necessary for the system? Is E-Settings Manager necessary too?
Do you use any alternative software in stead of the Acer stuff for example to emulate the Pewrformance Manager?

Thanks

 

The only acer software that I have found useful is acer launch manager. This is used so that you can see the volume level on the screen as well as to see the wireless status and bluetooth status on the screen as well. All other acer utilities IMHO are useless and are quite redundant as windows has power management already built in, however I prefer to use rmclock for power management. Notebook hardware control (NHC) can also be used for power management however I prefer rmclock.

 

can this laptop run ut3? i play ut2k4 at high settings fine...

 

Has anyone found problems in uninstalling the E-Performance Manager? or any other problems when running the performance enhancement? I only ask as I use programmes which need the video drivers to be stable so they can latch onto them, and it seems like the performance enhancement section of the performance manager plays with the video display to increase performance??
If anyone has any advanced info about this product, there is nothing on the Acer site, please could they help?

 

Not sure if anyone has tried updating the BIOS on a Vista-based 5102, but thought it worth mentioning that I had. I was apprehensive at first because the Acer support site does not contain any BIOS downloads in the Vista section for the 5102.

I decided to use the version listed in the XP section, because the BIOS should be OS independent so the only incompatibility I could conceive of would be the installation software. I tried installing WinPhlash separately, which worked, however attempting to install the 3.05A BIOS brought up an verification code error. However running the batch file from the XP BIOS download worked without any problems - and it uses WinPhlash too, must be a different version though.

I had been holding off updating the BIOS until a Vista-specific installer appears on the Acer support site. What pushed me to act is that I've just ordered 2GB of PC2-5300 from Crucial and wanted to get 256Mb of video RAM.

Q) Is there any way to tell whether the RAM is running in dual channel mode? I have disabled the silent-boot Acer logo in the BIOS, but the first screen disappears faster than I can read it.

 

Yeah there is a way to see if the ram is running in dual channel. When you go into windows just download the program CPU-z and check the memory tab and see what it tells you the channel is dual or single. If you install 2 x 1gb crucial memory sticks then you will be running in dual channel mode.

As for the 256mb issue with the Xpress 1100 there really is no performance gained when going to 256mb so IMO it isn't worth going to 256mb. The 1100 just isn't powerful enough to really use it, you are better off keeping it @ 128mb and use the extra ram for windows, but you can test this and see if it works for you.

 

Thanks for that Evolution. I'll have a look at CPU-z.

I wondered if the slightly faster RAM and the extra video RAM would make a difference to the video performance of the laptop, but from what you say probably not a great deal. My main driver in getting extra RAM is Vista - it chews up a huge amount of the 1GB I currently have.

 

I hsve the exact same error on my 5102. It will boot into XP about 1 time in 20 tries, snd it will BSOD within a few minutes of use. The thing is, it's just come back from acer today, for the second time, and it still has the same fault. If I request for a replacement will I get one?

 

There is a new driver for the Radeon Xpress 1100. According to some sites ATI's new drivers are boosting performance.

 

Anyone know if catalyst 7.10 is better than omega drivers 7.9?

 

can u even install those on this laptop without issues??

 

I installed the latest 7.10 driver from the AMD/ATI website on Monday and it works perfectly. I dumped Acer's OEM XP install earlier this year and I'm using Vista Ultimate now. I think that point is relevant because previously on OEM XP none of the drivers from the ATI site worked.

 

I don't bother with omega drivers; that guy doesn't seem to keep them up to date at all these days (always making excuses !). He also doesn't have vista drivers and I am running vista so for the moment omegas are of no use to me anyway.

What I do is get the desktop driver for the xpress 1100 from AMD/ATI website as usual and then use driver heaven's mobility mod tool to mod the desktop drivers for mobile use. Been doing this for months now and I have no issues.

 

Hello,
Does anyone know what are the specs for the Card Reader is, i.e. what is the max memory card capacity does it read? And if there is an updated driver for the card reader? Thanks. cheers, Bud

 

man i tried that with the new drivers from ati and when i loaded games (ut2k4 and TF2) it wasn't wide screen anymore . . . . it was just black spaces when the screen should had stretched out or no increase in fps . . . . . i jus did a sys. restore back to the factory


and do vista run as smooth as xp does on this? i was thinking about gettin vista or install a fresh xp i had....

 

Vista works very nicely on mine. You will need more than 1Gb of RAM because I found that Vista uses most of that (minus the 256Mb I'm sharing with the GPU), so I'm on 2Gb now. I read that Vista uses memory as a cache more aggressively than other versions of Windows, hence memory usage is a lot higher.

Suppose the choice will be determined by compatibility of the apps you use. Vista is nice though - once you get used to the differences, such as User Account Control and some of the other things I've come across recently: nice new task scheduler (which I'm still learning about) and no 'net send' command.

Don't spend a lot upgrading though, the difference between XP and Vista is not spectacular. It is not a life changing upgrade. ;-)

 

well i dont really need vista then if it takes up more ram . . . plus i have unpatched theme which give me then look of it . . . i just want to have better gaming performance, i have a 2gig stick coming this week hope it gets me some more fps in TF2.

 

Do the new drivers really boost performance? can anyone agrre or something? any bug reports?

 

Yes they do, I got a couple more points in futuremark with them.
and they work perfectly fine on my computer. :]

 

I just wanted to alert all of the 5100 owners that acer has released a new BIOS for this model. The latest version is 3.10 and as usual you can find it on acer euro located here

 

Do you install just the drivers or CCC as well? When I tried installing the package, after uninstalling the previous drivers and CCC, I lost CCC. My 1500 didn't seem to like it either.

Nothing under the Vista section.

 

Look under the BIOS section

 

That's what I was doing. Bios->Vista = 0

 

Use the XP BIOS, it supports Vista.

 

Any idea what the newer bios offers? I'm on 3.09b now.

 

Download the BIOS file and then check the "released statement" text file and see if the anything that the new BIOS fixes has been an issue for you. I see you have version 3.09 which means you got your notebook recently as the last version acer released to the public was in june.

 

This new bios 3.10 have one minor issue on my 5102. It doesn't remember TFT brightness value after close and then open the lid, same with reboot.

 

I'll stick with what I have. Hey, just stuck my Crucial 1gbx2 in that I had left over from my Macbook. Vista seems to like it. Memtest(ing) it now.

 

i was going to buy some more memory for this laptop what kind to get? i heard it was picky on ram...

and i was aiming for 2gb (i have 2x512s now) should i get a single 2 gb stick with 1 of the 512s or just get 2x1gb sticks?

 

The 5100 will work with ram from any of the major ram manufacturers like corsair, crucial, kingston etc. Just try to stay way from cheaper low end brands as the 5100 might not like them.

As for what memory configuration to use it is really up to you; if you go with 2x1gb you will get dual channel. If you go with 1x2gb and use one of the previous 512mb sticks you won't have dual channel, but you will have more memory that way, also it will be easier if you want to upgrade to 4gb afterward by just adding another 2gb stick. So like I said this decision is really up to you here.

 

how would dual channel benefit? plus i don't plan on going to 4 gig... (do xp even support that much?) i just wanted more fps in a couple of games...

 

Dual channel doubles the memory bandwidth from 64bits to 128bits it essentially doubles data throughput from RAM to the memory controller. I didn't know you were using XP so the 4gb option isn't needed on XP 2gb will do, so you can get the 2x1gb and be fine on XP.

As for getting a few more FPS in games, the xpress 1100 that the 5100 has is an integrated GPU therefore it is not by any means powerful so don't expect great performance from it. Going up to 2gb will mean you shouldn't ever run out of memory in XP but you probably won't see any improvement in FPS in games.

 

even if i dedicate more ram to the gpu?? . . . guess its time for a newer laptop

 

You can try turning the xpress 1100's memory up to the max which is 256mb (via the BIOS) and see if you get any better FPS, if that doesn't work then there isn't much else that you can do.

 

the max it lets me get now with the amount of ram i have is 128, that was the reason i wanted more ram but it if wont help i dont need it...

 

You can get it up to 256 if you update your bios, but it won't do as much as you think it would. The most you can do is just keep your ati drivers up to date. You can overclock your graphics card, but its highly unsafe to do so on a laptop and is not reccomended.

 

OpenGL working with BIOS 3.10 and ATI Catalyst 7.10. Working apps: GLTron (game) and GoogleEarth. Games like KOTOR may have some improvement.

 

I had one 1GB module to start with and bought an extra 1GB module. It works great and is stable, but in CPU-Z 1.41 (latest version), it shows it's only working in single channel mode. Is there anything special you need to do to get dual channel mode?