Acer Aspire( PLEASE HELP )

[firmsupportf]

Hi every one can some one HELP ME . My desk top computer that is starting up very slow and does time out. It is a Acer Spire I dont have a recovery disc but I have been told the recovery is in the Hard Drive. Does any one know how to reformat a Acer aspire. Need help bad. Windows XP

[TwylaTwobits]

First things first before you do a reformat. Have you tried downloading Ccleaner? It's a free program, try to download that and run it, it gets rid of all the extraneous crap pcs pick up as you surf the web. Also make sure you have a decent antivirus and that the definitions are up to date. I recommend avg from grisoft.com. It's a free antivirus and very good. I also recommend Malwarebytes, it's a freeware program that identifies malware programs that can be resourse hogs.

If after all that and it is still running slow, try to think of any programs you have added lately.

[Samantha Sabrina]

You will be amazed at how much CCleaner will help!

Go to this link: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Select the Download link in the upper left hand corner, I know it has places down in the middle of the page that looks like you have to buy it but you do NOT, those links are there for Donations ONLY.

This is a Totally Free program and it works wonders.

Huggggggggggs

Samantha

[BareHunter45]

I'd do a disk defrag as well, and System restore to a time when you knew it was working better too (before you reformat).

[fredtyg]

I'd do a disk defrag as well, and System restore to a time when you knew it was working better too (before you reformat).

I'd use System Restore as a last resort. I used that once and had some real hassles with updating all my programs after I restored it to just the condition it was in a couple months earlier.

If you decide to reformat the hard drive (something some folks do every now and then, anyway) be sure to back up any important files you have and write down the license or registration programs of any programs you downloaded in the past, especially if you paid for them.

I believe to reformat the hard drive you just put the recovery disk in the cd drive and select Reformat when the program opens. It's been a while, but that's what I recall doing.

[elian]

Right click My Computer, Left click Manage from the pop-up menu. Look for the Event Logs on the left side, find the system event log, click on it and read the right side of the screen to make sure there aren't a million little red messages that say "Bad Block on Disk 0".

If so, that is a good indicator that your hard drive is about to fail - you should back up any important data onto CD's, flash drive or another physical hard drive as soon as possible.

As far as recovery discs - newer machines often have the recovery software in a separate partition on the hard drive nowadays - usually when you boot there is a special key combination you can hit to boot into recovery mode.

If you look through the start menu at options you seldom use you may see a program that will help you to create a set of recovery CD's or DVD's by feeding the computer a set of blank writable media.

If "slow starting up" means once you see the desktop it takes forever to load - when was the last time the machine was fast? Did it slow down after you installed a specific program, or connected a specific hardware device - or installed software patches from Windows Update?

Do you run antivirus software on the computer? When was the last time you updated your virus definitions?

If you don't have current antivirus you can download Microsoft Security Essentials for free from:

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/)

MS product gives basic file based antivirus protection and antispyware protection.

If this is your personal home computer you could also try AVG Free version instead (I think the benefit of AVG over MS is an additional plug-in to scan Email for viruses):

http://free.avg.com/us-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free

Only run one antivirus program on your computer - if you run more than one at once they may conflict with each other and damage the software. If you already have one installed and the subscription is expired/you can't renew download one of these new programs, remove the old one with Add/Remove programs control panel and then install the new program.

CCleaner as others have recommended is a good product - use the registry cleaner part of it..be prepared for it to erase your "autocomplete" lists in internet explorer, etc. (built up list of web addresses you type in.)

Also spybot is a decent program as well to detect and remove spyware..

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html

Running a disk check and a defrag (My Computer, Right click C: drive, Properties, System Tools tab) are also useful. HOWEVER, both of those are very intensive operations.

Make sure you have backed up any important data first and you have original discs to reload your programs in case something goes wrong.
Only do after a full virus scan, after you are sure the hard drive isn't failing.

You should always run the disk check first BEFORE you run the defrag (I think most of the time the defragger automatically runs a basic check anyway before it starts). The defragger relies on the directory structure information to determine the physical location of your files, so if the directory structure is corrupted the defragger may not work properly

The disk check will make sure the logical directory/index structure of your drive isn't corrupted (power went out or a program crashed while the disk was writing for example) - if it finds corruption it will ATTEMPT to repair it if you chose the "Automatically fix file system errors" option when you started.

The defrag will move data that is physically scattered around your hard drive into contiguous blocks of data in the proper order for accessing the files in the most efficient manner possible.

[firmsupportf]

Right click My Computer, Left click Manage from the pop-up menu. Look for the Event Logs on the left side, find the system event log, click on it and read the right side of the screen to make sure there aren't a million little red messages that say "Bad Block on Disk 0".

If so, that is a good indicator that your hard drive is about to fail - you should back up any important data onto CD's, flash drive or another physical hard drive as soon as possible.

As far as recovery discs - newer machines often have the recovery software in a separate partition on the hard drive nowadays - usually when you boot there is a special key combination you can hit to boot into recovery mode.

If you look through the start menu at options you seldom use you may see a program that will help you to create a set of recovery CD's or DVD's by feeding the computer a set of blank writable media.

If "slow starting up" means once you see the desktop it takes forever to load - when was the last time the machine was fast? Did it slow down after you installed a specific program, or connected a specific hardware device - or installed software patches from Windows Update?

Do you run antivirus software on the computer? When was the last time you updated your virus definitions?

If you don't have current antivirus you can download Microsoft Security Essentials for free from:

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/)

MS product gives basic file based antivirus protection and antispyware protection.

If this is your personal home computer you could also try AVG Free version instead (I think the benefit of AVG over MS is an additional plug-in to scan Email for viruses):

http://free.avg.com/us-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free

Only run one antivirus program on your computer - if you run more than one at once they may conflict with each other and damage the software. If you already have one installed and the subscription is expired/you can't renew download one of these new programs, remove the old one with Add/Remove programs control panel and then install the new program.

CCleaner as others have recommended is a good product - use the registry cleaner part of it..be prepared for it to erase your "autocomplete" lists in internet explorer, etc. (built up list of web addresses you type in.)

Also spybot is a decent program as well to detect and remove spyware..

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html

Running a disk check and a defrag (My Computer, Right click C: drive, Properties, System Tools tab) are also useful. HOWEVER, both of those are very intensive operations.

Make sure you have backed up any important data first and you have original discs to reload your programs in case something goes wrong.
Only do after a full virus scan, after you are sure the hard drive isn't failing.

You should always run the disk check first BEFORE you run the defrag (I think most of the time the defragger automatically runs a basic check anyway before it starts). The defragger relies on the directory structure information to determine the physical location of your files, so if the directory structure is corrupted the defragger may not work properly

The disk check will make sure the logical directory/index structure of your drive isn't corrupted (power went out or a program crashed while the disk was writing for example) - if it finds corruption it will ATTEMPT to repair it if you chose the "Automatically fix file system errors" option when you started.

The defrag will move data that is physically scattered around your hard drive into contiguous blocks of data in the proper order for accessing the files in the most efficient manner possible.

Thank you for your input on my problam. my hard drive did crash Just as I was backing up my files.

[elian]

Thank you for your input on my problam. my hard drive did crash Just as I was backing up my files.

Hope you were able to salvage your stuff. I like Seagate drives as replacements, they are one of the few drives that built a little better - but it seems like anything made these days is using low quality parts to save a coin per unit.

Also hope you are able to do the recovery, manufacturers are sometimes a pain in the behind if you need to order the CD's separately.

When people give me old used machines and "can't find the original disc" I usually try loading Ubuntu Linux on the machine instead and giving the machine to another person who could use it. http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/910features - it's a completely free operating system that is pretty useful (once you install the restricted-extras package) if you have a high speed internet connection. It comes pre-loaded a lot of basic applications that enable most of the things people like to do with the computer.

It's not "Windows" so if there is a particular Windows program that you can't live without, or a certain piece of equipment hooked to your machine that is only supported in Windows it may not be the best solution for you. Also if you want to attempt recovering data from your bad drive it is best to stick with Windows until you are sure you have as much of your missing data as possible.

You can burn the CD and boot it to try it out without installing anything to see if your hardware is supported - but it does run slower off of the CD.

[roy m cox]

Hope you were able to salvage your stuff. I like Seagate drives as replacements, they are one of the few drives that built a little better - but it seems like anything made these days is using low quality parts to save a coin per unit.

Also hope you are able to do the recovery, manufacturers are sometimes a pain in the behind if you need to order the CD's separately.

When people give me old used machines and "can't find the original disc" I usually try loading Ubuntu Linux on the machine instead and giving the machine to another person who could use it. http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/910features - it's a completely free operating system that is pretty useful (once you install the restricted-extras package) if you have a high speed internet connection. It comes pre-loaded a lot of basic applications that enable most of the things people like to do with the computer.

It's not "Windows" so if there is a particular Windows program that you can't live without, or a certain piece of equipment hooked to your machine that is only supported in Windows it may not be the best solution for you. Also if you want to attempt recovering data from your bad drive it is best to stick with Windows until you are sure you have as much of your missing data as possible.

You can burn the CD and boot it to try it out without installing anything to see if your hardware is supported - but it does run slower off of the CD.

iv have try to get Ubuntu Linux to mount on my hard drive and cant get it to .. how do you get it to mount i have try ed & try ed and it still wont stay on it

[bygyuk]

Click on Places (2nd from left on the bar at the top of the screen). Your hard drive should be listed as '100 GB Filesystem' (or whatever it is). Select it and a window will open showing its contents.

[welickit]

If you are able to boot and get on here send me an email. You can survive a drive crash. I can talk you through most of it but it will help if you are aware of how to boot into safe mode. Slow boot and hanging are more frequently caused by startup entries in msconfig than a malware running. You can also set your timeout so you save about 20 to 30 seconds at boot and also set it for a no GUI boot which will shave time off the boot process. Your machine should boot to a desktop in 45 to 60 seconds. If you are running all kinds of antivirus and spyware programs at start up then you are generating a conflict and it will take considerably longer to boot and the system will be prone to lock up because of the conflicts that come into play between anti virus and or spyware programs.

[dafydd]

Hi every one can some one HELP ME . My desk top computer that is starting up very slow and does time out. It is a Acer Spire I dont have a recovery disc but I have been told the recovery is in the Hard Drive. Does any one know how to reformat a Acer aspire. Need help bad. Windows XP

don't know about that, but as an Acer Aspire user, WTF is the touchpad about? It is ultra sensitive and even after adjusting settings turns browsing the internet into the equivalent of dropping a file of papers, with pages flying back and forth at random speeds. Any advice?
not wanting to turn this into a tech forum....
bi angle? er...are bisexuals more likely to buy a mac or a pc?

d:tongue: