Upgrading Acer Aspire 5100 laptop

My wife has an Acer Aspire 5100-xxxx laptop with an Athlon TK-53 processor in it. She's running Vista Home Premium. I recently upgraded her RAM from 1GB to 4GB; turned off some of the startup crap that was making it sluggish on startup, but now, I would like to replace the processor with a Turion TL-62. Not being greedy, here; I just want to bump up the speed by 400MHZ.

I already have the processor, and have tried installing it, but from what I can tell, the processor won't run for more than a couple of seconds before it quits. I expect that the POST instruction set in the bios may be different for a Turion as opposed to the Athlon. Would I be correct in assuming this? Or, is the bios the same for both of them? Current BIOS is v3.05. I have considered updating the BIOS, but I'm not sure if this will fix my problem. I would like to be able to determine if I have bought a defective processor, but since I'm not an expert in this area of laptop computing, I would be afraid of making a terrible mistake; especially since it's my wife's laptop.

Any and all info is very welcome.

Jeff

 

does anything show on the screen when you turn the system on, or does the fan spin, but nothing happens? It could be that you may need to update the bios?

Also, what is the system used for, is it used for any CPU intensive tasks?

Edit: I've just had a quick search regarding your issue, and it seems others have tried this upgrade but they had no success, a lot of the topics i've looked at don't specify whether or not they updated the bios. If I were you, I would pop the original CPU back in, and update the bios ( be aware that when updating the bios, the machine NEEDS to be plugged in, all other programs running are closed, and don't turn the machine off until instructed to do so, if the update goes wrong the laptop will probably be a useless brick that will be difficult if not impossible to get going again, if you're unsure about doing this the best thing is not to do it, or get someone who is confident enough to do it), once updated try the new CPU again, if this doesn't work, probable chances are it is not supported!!!!

 

I put the original CPU back in and got it going again. I have been looking online for something that would tell me if a bios update would support the new processor. I certainly don't want to create a brick; my wife would then feel she should take over my laptop; Farmville is REAL important.

As far as CPU usage, all she ever does is email, get on Facebook, Farmville, and things like that. No heavy duty gaming or anything like that. Maybe I should search out what bios is used for the TL-62 and go with that one.

I'll post what I find.
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Here's what I've found so far. I took this off of amd.com.:

Processor AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core
Mobile Technology TL-62, TL-56
Hardware
Motherboard: AMD S1 DBM690T/E
BIOS Info: 08.00.14 (Note the version #. It's a major step from v3.05 to this one.)
Is BIOS Publicly
Available: No (The caveat!)
Chipset: AMD M690T (This may be an issue, also. It may require a different chipset than the one in the 5100)

So, as it is turning out, I've spent $25 on nothing. I guess I could invest in a motherboard and build a computer around it.

 

You can't compare BIOS versions of different motherboards and claim that there is a big difference because the numeration is different.

AMD Model S1 DBM690T is a development board and has nothing to do with your mobo in 5100.

The most recent BIOS version available for your notebook is 3.13

According to a Service Guide for Aspire 5100 TL-62 is supported however there are two Turions TL-62- one is based on Tyler core and is built in 65nm process, the other one is based on Trinidad core and is 90nm one.
It's likely that this is the root of the problem.

 

You're right; I didn't notice the difference in mobo until after I posted that. What is the "nm" process?

 

Manufacturing process- the lower the process the less heat is dissipated. So the more modern the CPU or GPU the lower manufacturing the process it's built in- while computing power goes up the manufacturing process goes down- that's why CPUs don't get much hotter than they used to.

Anyway- although both TL-62s are called the same these are in fact different CPUs. Update BIOS- maybe your CPU is supported by the most recent one.
If it's not then I'm afraid there's not much you can do with this unit.