Acer Aspire 5920 and Windows 7 clean install

Acer should provide drivers for these extra buttons - have a check on the Acer site.

Windows update will also find them, but will do all the security updates etc. first, so it will come a day or so after you do the install.

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Acer should provide drivers for these extra buttons - have a check on the Acer site.

As far as I can make out from the computer manual and the Acer website, these involve using "Acer Empowering Technology". The Acer website, doesn't seem to have a 64 bit download available for this "Empowering Technology". I will, however, have another look.

In that case, if you can't get the 64-bit drivers, stick with 32-bit for now.

Unless it's for power use, 32-bit should be fine.

Just been having a very careful look at the PDF manual for my laptop, and it would seem that the wifi on/off button is not user programmable (unlike the other extra buttons). I have also found 64 bit LAN drivers on the Acer website, so I think that is "problem solved". Thanks for the comments.

Before going that far (and forgive me if I'm preaching to the converted already), have you used any of the smart cleaning software packages? I started using System Mechanic a year or so back and was pleasantly surprised at how much it helped (despite me thinking I had been keeping a relatively uncluttered laptop). Some of it you do probably do yourself anyway but having it under one click is useful. Sticking some more memory in helped 'n all!

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Originally posted by JamieWednesday:
Before going that far (and forgive me if I'm preaching to the converted already), have you used any of the smart cleaning software packages? I started using System Mechanic a year or so back and was pleasantly surprised at how much it helped (despite me thinking I had been keeping a relatively uncluttered laptop). Some of it you do probably do yourself anyway but having it under one click is useful. Sticking some more memory in helped 'n all!

I have tried them in the past on previous machines. Helped a little, but not a lot. This time I have left it until it is taking several minutes ot boot up, and is slow loading programs etc. Norton says my system is clean, as does Spybot, so it's back to the old "reinstall Windows" ploy ... (sigh)

Makes me nostalgic for my old Acorn RiscPC - that booted in seconds, and on the rare occasions it did go wrong, a simple power on/off fixed it. The only reason I changed was software availability - specifically video editting. Oh ... and the need for Powerpoint to prepare tutorials.

Do you run CCleaner regularly? You'd be amazed at the crap Windows accumulates over time and this can affect performance.

You may also want to consider replacing Norton. It can cause its own performance problems and is not highly regarded within the technical community.

You haven't said how much ram you have and also what's the size of your HDD?

How full is your c drive?

How did Acer format your drives as they have a tendency to split them into 3 seperate parts. A c drive, dtat drive and the hidden partition for re-installing your software?

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Do you run CCleaner regularly? You'd be amazed at the crap Windows accumulates over time and this can affect performance.

You may also want to consider replacing Norton. It can cause its own performance problems and is not highly regarded within the technical community.

Norton has never caused me any particular problem, and I now have nearly 2 years subscription left (including the old version and the time that came with SWMBO's new copy). May be laziness, but I'll stick to what I know for now.

CCleaner? I'll give it a whirl when Windows 7 starts to slow down.

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Originally posted by ewemon:
You haven't said how much ram you have and also what's the size of your HDD?

How full is your c drive?

How did Acer format your drives as they have a tendency to split them into 3 seperate parts. A c drive, dtat drive and the hidden partition for re-installing your software?

4GB RAM. 3 partitions. 32.5GB free on C drive

I am going to do the clean install of Windows 7 and reformat the hard drive (250GB) as one partition. Don't worry, I keep all my large files on external drives anyway!

Why change to Win7? Well, SWMBO (my technologically now semi-computer literate other half) now has her own Win7 laptop, and occasionally wants to use my laptop. (why?), so it will save me time spent answering her questions if both laptops use the same operating system.

I think the main problem with Windows is that so many programs insist on running in the background "just in case you might need them". Hence consuming lots of system resources and slowing things down. I try to keep on top of these by stopping that type of activity from running at startup as much as possible, but I have a suspicion that a lot of them just set themselves up again that way when they have an update.

Come to think of it, I haven't done that for a while, so may be part of the problem. I'll have to see how you do that in Windows 7 when installed.

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Originally posted by Dungassin:


CCleaner? I'll give it a whirl when Windows 7 starts to slow down.

Don't wait until then. It's a regular maintenance activity, not a one-off "fix it" thing. You should run it every week or two. You'll be astonished at how many temporary files Windows creates and how quickly your internet cache grows.

Just a quick, and possibly insulting question so apologies in advance. Do you have a valid W7 licence for your proposed new installation?

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Just a quick, and possibly insulting question so apologies in advance. Do you have a valid W7 licence for your proposed new installation?

Well, I bought a pukka Windows 7 DVD (full version not upgrade - I've had problems with "upgrade" discs before) from Amazon, so the answer is "yes".

I've done the clean install of the 64bit version of Windows 7, and all works except the "multimedia" buttons on the right side of my laptop - but that's OK because I would have disabled THEM anyway.

Every program I've reinstalled so far works fine, except for Buffalo NAS Navigator, which seems to install OK, but then keeps asking me for username and password for my Network when I try to access my Buffalo Pro, and won't go any further. Bloody annoying, because I'm using my laptop mainly in hardwired CAT6 LAN, just like I was before, and I was never asked that question on Vista.

AFAIR I never changed any default settings or the Admin pw on the Buffalo. It looks like I'm going to have real problems getting the Buffalo NAS to work. So far I've tried the name and password for my wireless (just in case, although I had no real expectation of that working). I didn't set a logon password for Windows 7 - after all, I or my family are the only ones who usually use it, and I always got very annoyed with having to enter a pw on Vista Professional just to use my laptop. Just printed off the Buffalo manual so I can read it thoroughly to see if there's a solution there.

I'm sorry I wasn't acting as the licence police but I've met quite a few people who think that having a setup disk means they can happily install on any other PC they have. I got caught out a while back when I got a message from Microsoft informing me I had an invalid copy of Windows installed and would no longer be able to download updates. This in spite of having bought it all from my local PC shop and having been given a "valid" licence key in good faith. Sadly when I chased it up I found the shop had gone bust.

I'm going to take a different line.

You may have issues with Norton (unlikely) but the fixes are out there. You may have problems with background processes but again that's easy to monitor and permanently fix. What I'm amazed nobody has said is

a) you have 32GB space left out of 250GB. Barely 15% disc space left!!! Nah, can't see a problem there at all

b) you have three partitions on one disc! No recipe for disc thrashing; small swap files and virtual memory there at all

c) You have 4GB of memory on a 32bit OS. A quick Google should tell you just how much of your memory is not being used.

A switch to a 64bit OS will yield a better memory result but it won't solve your fundamental issues which are related to disc space and partitions IME.

Mike

TomK : That's OK. I bought a genuine copy to avoid such problems.

Mike: I now only have one partition, as I got rid of the others when I installed Windows 7 64 bit, so I now have one partition of 232GB with 163GB free.

As I said, so far everything works now except my Buffalo NAS drive which is giving problems.