Constant Freezing

This week I bought a White Acer Aspire One D150 and haven't been able to make it work long enough to shut it down again.
Most of the time when I use it it will freeze up after 10 mintues, or maybe even less. However sometimes it will work untill the battery gets low and I have to charge it. It will also do a system beep every so often, and I can't work out what for. It's no the battery because it did it on half battery earlier. Anyone else have these problems? I am tempted to put the HDD into my other laptop and re-install XP on it, but would that solve anything?

 

The most common cause of problems such as this on new units is the bloatware. Have you removed the unecessary programs that come preinstalled? Especially important for good performance is removing the preinstalled antivirus, and replacing it with something lightweight like AVG or Avira.

I wouldn't recomend installing any OS with your hd in a different laptop, you would have to do a repair install after putting it back in your Acer due to the completely different hardware configurations. One way you can test if it's OS/software related or possibly hardware related, is to install Windows 7 RC to a new partition. If it installs fine and doesn't freeze, then it may be a problem with the XP install or the bloatware. If Windows 7 also freezes up, it may be a hardware issue.

 

if you bought it new i'd be tempted to just return it....

 

The only remedial action you can take is to reload the entire system from the Acer recovery tool, if this fails return it, there is no reason for the Netbook to freeze with the initial soft-load, it may run slow. The longer you leave it the more of a problem it`s going be with the retailer. I have 2 Acer Netbooks and they are extremely robust and have never frozen.

On the hardware side is the fan kicking in? as the Netbook will run on battery and not mains it may be overheating due to the fan not running. Set the power setting to "Max Battery" this will hold down the CPU frequency keeping it cooler.

All the same I do recommend uninstalling all the garbage, as it does impede performance. I understand why ACER bundles all the bloatware, however I also have an LG X120 and it comes with none, only the option to instal AV if you want and Open Office (optional install), no games, no trailware, no browser integrations, no pre installed AV that is far to heavy going for a Netbook. The only additional features are LG`s own utilities, I wish more would take this path...

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