ACER AO531 10.1IN NETBOOK Newbie Questions

Hi first time poster.

I have just bought a refurbished ACER AO531 10.1IN NETBOOK from the argos clearance site on eBay.

It arrived yesterday but regret to say that when I plugged the charger in I didn't get any charging led. Contacted the company that carry out the refurb and they were very apologetic saying it was almost certainly a faulty charger. They have arranged DHL collection and replacement. The machine wouldn't power up so I am assuming the battery didn't have any charge before delivery.

Fortunately although frustrating it isn't my main machine but was bought primarily to control my model railway and be used when on holiday.

In the meantime I have been reading through various posts here and elsewhere and have a couple of questions, on the assumption that when the new charger arrives everything will be OK.

Firstly, seen a lot of comments about people not realizing they need to back up the OS. As there isn't an CD/DVD drive and I don't have an external drive can this be done to an external usb hard drive? I believe that Windows 7 (installed) has that option but not sure.

I assume there is a recovery partition on the hdd but my own experience of these on at least 3 other machines isn't very encouraging as so far I have never been able to complete a successful recovery and have always had to revert to some form of disc.

Secondly, prior to realising that the charger wasn't working I thought I would switch the wirless lan on. Found the switch on the front but unlike my main Toshiba it didn't seem to click across just worked like a sliding switch. Can't test until I get the machine working but is this correct or should it lock? Also, is there an option to enable wireless in software.

Thanks

 

Hope your replacement unit is good. I'd be a little leery of the quality of battery from a third-party refurber. On your questions:

- no problem connecting a USB external drive for backup (I use SyncBack over the wi-fi to sync the netbook with main PC, and have the the 1TB backup drive connected to it.)
- no personal experience with recovery (knock on wood) but this is a good site to learn from others
- the wi-fi slider just switches to the right and springs back, does not lock

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the reply.

The refurb company do the work on behalf of ARGOS who guarantee the item for 12 months, one of the reasons I bought it.

OK, have external hard drive so when I get the machine working I'll back up.

Thanks for the info on the wi-fi slider.

Thanks again

 

First - my motto is "Assumption is the mother of all F---ups."

Second - On the subject of the recovery DVDs I've tested the process on a D250 with XP and it works... mostly. I used the Start menu link for the Acer eRecovery and created the 3 DVDs (Recovery1 and Recovery2 plus apps/driver) and installed a spare drive that I'd used for some Linux experimentation. Ran into a Grub error 16 after the 'recovery' and nothing I could find on the Acer support sites would fix it. Ended up using the Ulitmate Boot Cd to rewrite the MBR and the machine booted fine and continues to survive my experiments. The recovery partition is NOT restored and the "press ALT-F10 to acitvate eRecovery" will no longer work. Based on what I've seen the DVDs replace what the recovery partition does in total. The Grub error would not have occurred on a new drive or one that had only been used in Windows systems. I would suggest that if you wish to preserve the system as it 'should' be, use a program like Acronis TrueImage or Clonezilla to make backup copies of each partition or if you're limited for space just the recovery partition. In the event of a drive failure these copies could be restored and the recovery partition should still function as intended.

Next I plan to test the Windows 7 process by installing a larger drive and using the DVDs to repopulate it.