The Acer 5102 Thread

Well i have acer 5102 aspire adn i have little problem:
I've installed win xp pro sp2 on my notebook and I have problem since then - my system i hanging on (only what can I do is power him off for 4 or 5 sec.). He is hanging very randomly (sometimes after windows start, sometimes after a few hours). When I uninstall ati x1100 drivers (display drivers) everything it's OK. The acer support said that this is problem with compatible drivers for this system. I try to install few drivers and nothing.... Pls help me !!!

My enlish may be not very good ) (sorry for that).
You can answer me in Polish to thx.

 

i didn't have the patience to read through all the pages, sorry. but i have a problem now. i played fifa 07 on the 5102 and it played fine...no problems at all. the graphics were decent and everything was fine. i then played splinter cell pandora tomorrow and at some stage the game shut down giving me some king of an error which after searching for it on the web i found to be due to the drivers. i started playing XIII after that without updating the drivers and it gave me the same problem. so i decidd to go for the update. now i messd around a lot. i installed omega divers and have since come back to the v8.251 driver. i have some updated version installer too but i didnt want to risk it. now i feel that i am kind of at the 'factory' setting and so i tried to run fifa again. but the game runs frame by frame. the super flow and the graphics have all gone and the frame by frame play is making me go crazy for the past 2 days.
please help me out here. all i want is to go back to the original settings where the game was playing well.
i am a kind of an amatuer here and most high level terms are greek to me...so if somebody could explain to me in the simlest way he/she can it would be helpful.
thanks a lot

 

i dont really mean frame by frame...but the game has become slow...as if i am playing in slow motion....

 

download the drivers from the europe acer support site. done. other than that, follow the instructions i posted a few days back to get the newest ati drivers. other then that. can someone PLEASE answer my question about the acer orbicam and the widget controls for the light settings and other settings? (it was like a 3 button widget that appeared when accessing the orbicam through explorer file window)

 

Hi, I heard the amd dual-core optimizer was known to give some problems. Do it? Or does it actually help (in games)?

 

I don't feel the difirence when i have the dual core optimizer installed or not - but the amd says that he help to optimize work on 2 cores

 

grrr ignore my questions, i guess nobody knows the answer. i hope none of you have the controls/widgets that i am talking about then. anyway, the dual core optimizer does help, also installing the driver on amd's site helps as well. obviously games are a good measure of the cpu, but also encoding programs and such are an even better measure of the improvements. i find that encoding dvds takes about 50% less time after installing the optimizer

 

have you read my post on optimizing the 5102? There are a couple of drivers that might help you get the most from the Turion. While you might not notice a difference in everyday tasts (i mean, how much faster can firefox and IE startup?) if generally provides the cores with better instructions.

 

Well if thats the review then yea.

 

there is also a new Turionx2 driver that is newer than the one provided by Acer. that and the AMD Dual Core Optimizer should help boost performance a little.

 

Can anyone answer my problem ?? This hangings of system are very very irritate. Maybe someone have the same problem as mine as have resolved him.... Help me. thx

 

can some1 plz answer my question...i'm in a complete fix...tnx!!!

 

i just got a 5102, and i got several blue screens when working with video.
i've read all this Thread, and noone says its ahardware problem. may it be memory incompatibility ?

i did change any dimm from it, it got 1G ddr2 from store.

 

Hey I have the Aspire 5102WLMI, and the bluetooth button no longer comes on and when I try using the button it comes up in green on the screen "No Bluetooth device found" I could swear this would enable when I bought this laptop any ideas, or am I just cracking up?

 

I wrote to ATI about their buggy bios for Radeon 1100. I would like to see what they answer...

 

You should write for drivers on their site first

There are new drivers for touchpad, graphic, processor and sound on manufactures sites, so is highly probable that there are new drivers for other devices. Acer site should have the newest drivers. Lets organize mailing action to Acer for actual drivers on his site and to Ati for drivers for 1100 graphic card.

Somebody (good in english) should write temple of that letter and we all 5102 users should send it.

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My X1100 bios (008.050I.017.0) is almost year old (2006/02/15) could you check if some of you have newer? There is info in catalyst center about that.

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On backup cd in directory cd ATCH\CHIPSET there are drivers for our graphic card, 8.273 version, newer than on Acer site. Also card reader on cd is 2.07.05 and 1.7.4.0 on acer site. So they have newer versions of drivers, but don't public them.

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I mistaken erase my backup partition, could someone make image of that partition in Norton Ghost and place it on internet for example on rapidshare.de? After writing backup disk this partition takes only 16mb of place.

 

Drivers won't help. It's not a driver problem, and in fact you can use the radeon 200m drivers... The problem is the bios. I have the same as you and nothing is working: also in Linux we have the same problems...

By the way, ATI answered:

So nothing will be solved.

 

What kind of problems you experiencing with you bios?

This card should be 30% better than 200m so using this drivers isn’t good idea, better edit ini in setup files.
I don’t understand why on Ati site are drivers for 1150 (only difference is memory) and there is no for our card (only for vista, which don’t work).

 

Try running any openGL application, or just futuremark. You'll see you get only 2 fps with futuremark... In linux it's the same. OpenGL is not supported at all, it's rerouted to the Turion X2 and not handled by the GPU. glxgears should get something like 5000 fps, and you only get 800 fps, while without direct rendering (no 3d) you get 600. This means there is no acceleration at all, or very very little. If you look on google for 200m issue you'll find it. radeon 1100 is basically 200m overclocked (300 MHz instead of 200)

 

2d performance is also very slow in Windows. Just the refresh of windows is much slower than my old radeon 9000... For example: in your Catalyst Control Center, do you have the 3D preview window on? I bet you don't have it... It says "disabled".

 

i don't understand where you guys are having problems with the card. Did you download the newest drivers off of Acer's support site? I've been playing lots of games, some with OpenGL support and they've all been running fine. The refresh is excellent for me too.

If you changed your memory and started getting the BSD, you need to purchase corsair memory. That is the only brand that works with the 5102. Go to newegg, and search around. Other 5102 users have posted helpful memory tips on this forum too. The drivers on my 5102 are dated sometime August 2006. It's been perfect for me thus far.

 

Does anyone know why I cannot upgrade the firmware for my wireless broadband card. I try to update it using the pmcia slot on my 5102 but i get a firmware upgrade error message. Some folks at other forums told me its because something is grabbing my modem making it seem like its in use not sure what that something is. I have even tried booting into windows safe mode with networking and it still does not work. I know it has to be my laptop because when I take the card into the Sprint Store they are able to update it using their laptop. When I use the wireless card it does work but to do an upgrade using Sprints software which I have to I cannot do it something is blocking it and for the life of me I cannot figure out what could be grabbing my modem. I hate having to run to the Sprint store everytime I need to update my software.

 

hi, when i was in the bios looking around, i noticed that there is a boot sequence for sata... i was wondering if anyone knew if the aspire 5102 is sata compatible?

 

Mine came with a SATA-drive, so some are atleast. Dunno if those that didn't have them from the start are compatible though.

 

Hello,

My 5102 runs pretty well in XP Home edition SP2, with bios 2.40 which is better than 2.60, the problem with power saving you have is duo to the fact Acer doesn't make a bios based on standard, so when you run FreeBSD or Linux on it you'll get power save issues.

I hope Acer will pay more attention to the Bios standard which is now 3.0b

 

will a tl-60 work in the aspire 5102wlmi? if not how about tl-56 or tl-52?

 

When I goto the acer site it says the latest ati drivers are 8.251 but I have 8.273, so are mine the latest?? Also can this laptop run F.E.A.R? I have a gig a ram installed ( add a 512 Kingston value ram KVR533d2S4/512 which I never had any problems with)

 

I plan to buy the bluetooth adapter fom acer, I found a place in canada that sells it. can anyone verify for me that my machine does in fact have the bluetooth connector inside. I know that sometimes manufacturers leave connectors off of some motherboards (my dell is equipped for AGP but with onboard graphics they just leave the slot off of the board) it would be just my luck to find out I spent 100 bucks on something I cant use.

my machine is:
Aspire 5102WLMi
AMD Turion 64 x2 TL50 (1.6 GHz, 512KBL2 Cache)....

From TigerDiect

also anyone ith info on how to take apart this machine, could you please help. I started to and there are a lot of "snaps." I do not want to do something wrong and crack one.

Thanks
-todd

 

FYI:
I just found a PDF with a parts list for our computrs

Link

 

The connector will be there but it will not have the bluetooth cable.

Capital Data USA offer the bluetooth module and cable for $99 and $45 respectively. Seems like a waste of money just to get internal bluetooth though.

You can buy Acer Engineers Service Manuals on ebay for around £5 GBP if you want to see how to safely dismantle.

 

cool ... nice pdf ...very usefull so this means that i can buy a SATA hdd on my 5101WLMi( same config only the procesor is diferent )

 

yea i finished F.E.A.R-XP a few days ago ...and you can defenetly play it ... and you have the advantage of the x2 processor and gameplay shoud be considerably better then mine

 

hmm there is a new bios on acer-europe site 2.72

ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_3100_5100_5110/bios/Bios%202.72.zip

did anyone tryed it?
any changes on better?

 

Acer removed hotkey function?

Can someone confirm that?
What does it mean, I could't change brightness using hotkeys with new bios?

 

I still get occasional freezes whenever I turn on wireless(tried the 4.72 bios). The computer freezes and I see a black screen with vertical brown bars.

Does anyone have this problem?

-With the new bios 4.72, I can still change brightness settings with Fn+Right and Left. Don't know why they they said that they removed the hotkeys for samsung hot key patent.

-Also, will getting 2GB DDR2-667 RAM benefit the video card performance? Since it uses shared ram.

 

Hi, im going to buy a 5102, but it has the x1300, and i would like to know how long battery life it has. I would like to buy as soon as posible but dont know if the battery last as long as with the x1100.

Thanks

 

I think everyone does.
Very interesting thing is :
When you disable WLAN in windows network connections, you can turn on/off wireless card as many times as you wish, and nothing wrong is happening. For me it looks like drivers problem. As far s I know wlan driver is good, it work jus fine on other configurations (different notebooks), It seems that there is something wrong with ATI chipset driver…
But this is my personal opinion,

I think someone should check if this mysterious freezes occurs under linux?

 

I’m sure battery life will be shorter using X1300, but this card is much more faster than integrated x1100(in fact x1100 is simply renamed Xpress200M, ATI claims x1100 is 30% faster than 200M but there is no any evidence it's still very slow…
choice yourself ;]

 

ATI claims x1100 is 30% faster because of increased clock speeds. 250 > 300/400 (xpress1150)

 

As far I know for Xpress 200M normal core clock is 350Mhz
250Mhz maybe in energy saving mode.
This 33% theoretical advantage x1100 of 200m is not in the speed of core
Xpress200m Is sold with cpu equipped with ddr memory controller.
All Xpress1100 comes with S1 socket, so it's mean that that advantage might be in integrated with new CPU ddr2 controller
You can check it on your own, try to increase x1100 Core clock using any overclocking app
And then measure performance,
Then set core clock to normal speed, and overclock a little bit ddr2 system memory
And of course measure performance, and then compare results .
I’ve done this few months ago, and from my calculations seems that overclocking memory gives you better performance than overclocking chipset core speed

 

thanks dud

Do you know how to change memory frenquency divisor without overclocking cpu on aspire 5102?

 

i have had the 5102 for a while now, and i have only gotten the vertical bars twice, and that was after overclocking. It has been generally flawless for me, and i got the first build too.

 

Whats your specs?

 

I am planning to buy a PNY 1GB PC2-5300 667MHz DDR2 module from Staples(its on sale for $100). Currently I have the two factory installed 512MB 533mhz modules in the laptop, and I will have to take one out to install the new module. Do you think I will have any problems with running a 1GB 667Mhz module and a 512MB 533Mhz module together?
I know that theoretically it shouldn't be a problem(the 667Mhz memory will just run at 533Mhz), but you never know...

 

Stock Aspire 5101 with 512ddr2 4200, x1100 video card ..and turion MK36 2Ghz.... o and can u guys point me in the direction of an overcloking utility for the procesor and ram ??
and about the 2.72 .... in updated my bios and now i can change the video card's share to 128 even thou i have only 512 mb of ram ( now i can play Neverwinter Nights 2 ) )

 

Diabolic :

I’ve been successfully using ClockGen

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

As far I remember PLL installed on the motherboard is compatible with ICS 9514XX family(ICS951462)


Janek:
Hmm I don’t know how to write this, explain that… memory frequency divisor Is divisor between CPU FSB and memory frequency, so as far I know we can’t change memory divisor without changing CPU speed ..

There is one way to speed up memory freq without cpu overclocking simply change your ddr2 memory to 667Mhz

apw100:
right now i’ve Got 1GB 667Mhz and 512MB 533Mhz installed everything work just fine

 

Acer released a new BIOS for 5102

For Windows Vista & Windows XP both.

ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_3100_5100_5110/bios/

 

I dare say that on Vista the Video Card is perfectly supported, Catalyst finally shows the 3D preview window, and also AERO works!

 

What version do you use? Premium or ultimate?

 

I'm using business