Archive for the ‘Technical Support’ Category

Enabling the Acer Aspire 5000 series radio hardware

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

My sister’s laptop (which is the Acer Aspire 5003WLMi) had a severe virus attack recently which prevented her from being able to login to her Windows. She was quite upset about it because there were a lot of personal files which she hadn’t backed up; and we couldn’t even login to Safe Mode.

I managed to extract and back her data up, and then I proceeded to do a complete reformat and OS installation. I will go into the way I managed to back her data up in another post, as I would like to talk about a different issue in this post.

It came pre-installed with XP Home, but I wanted to give her a different OS so first I tried to install XP Pro. Everything was fine… except that her wireless wouldn’t come on. I tried Googling and read up threads in many forums which all suggested downloading the latest driver from the Acer website. I tried that, but it kept saying that the radio was disabled.

I was boggled because when I tried to look up the settings, the radio was enabled. So I decided to try restoring the laptop to factory settings… only, the recovery buttons don’t work. I found the recovery CDs and tried reinstalling them, but for some very strange reason, the recovery CDs don’t work. There were a total of four CDs (one system disc and three recovery discs), and after the laptop backs up from the third recovery disc, it requests for the system disc but when I put it in, it restarts the entire recover process. There seemed to be no way to restore it to the factory settings.

In the end I decided to install TinyXP on the laptop (I will discuss this in a future post), but the radio still seemed to be disabled. And then after I Googled for more help, I found the gem of an answer which solved this simple issue:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070126230653AACSPMa

It’s so infuriating that there is such a simple answer for such a simple problem! Even Acer doesn’t seem to have these kind of help files.

Anyway, the solution is as simple as this: there is a radio switch at the front of the laptop. It doesn’t look like a switch because its design makes it look like a status light instead. To switch on the radio, all I had to do was press it.

Here’s where the button is:

Radio hardware control switch on the Acer Aspire 5003WLMi

Radio hardware control switch on the Acer Aspire 5003WLMi

They should have just said so in the error message!

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Fixing Basic Computer Issues

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

I admit that I’m not a computer expert, although I work with computers better than the average person. I’ve learnt a lot of things about computers from friends as well as through constant Googling; and I’m able to fix a lot of basic (and some not-so-basic) computer problems. I don’t believe in sending computers to computer repair technicians when they don’t know very much more than I do.

I first learnt how to fix basic computer problems when my father bought our first home computer when I was a teenager (computers were not as common as they are now); whenever we had problems, we had to call the computer technician over. Whenever they come over, I would sit next to them and watch what they do; and I learnt to meddle with the computers by following what they did.

I remember the first time I discovered that the technicians didn’t know very much themselves. We had a problem with the computer (I can’t remember what it is now) and I had done my best to use my basic knowledge to fix it but couldn’t manage it; so I called the technician, only to find that he did the exact same things I had already done and nothing more! I remember being so disgusted that we were paying these people per visit to do nothing very much.

I learnt so much more by asking my friends who were computer experts themselves, and through a lot of trial and error. I think I must have crashed our one and only computer a lot back then.

In today’s Internet age, it’s so much easier to get help. Try Googling the keywords related to your issue, and chances are you’ll find hundreds of listings with solutions. If you can’t find the solution, just post your question on any related forum, and someone will provide you the answer. Sometimes I can feel like a complete noob, but when I read the forums, it’s relieving to know I’m not the only one who face such problems, and also that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to help.

I’ve decided to put up my own small contribution here by posting any solutions to issues I have personally experienced in the hope that it can help others. Trust me, I know what it’s like to have difficulties finding answers!

If any of you readers happen to have other solutions to the same problems I’ve had, feel free to share and comment!

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