Netbook freezes randomly

Re: Netbook freezes randomly - 1410 problems how to fix

TrackSmart, Please elaborate on the "problem right out of the box" and delineate the recommended updates.

 

I wanted to add my name to the long list of people that have been having troubles with this piece of junk. I bought it because on paper it's almost perfect. Nice screen, nice resolution, large keyboard, 2gb ram, 250gb hdd. Negatives being the 1.3ghz proc and vista. I thought the price made those negatives bearable. My wife was going to use this computer as her main since her needs are not demanding but highly portable. I spent 2 days setting the system up for her and then BOOM! lock up. No warning, no explanation just a frozen mouse pointer on the screen. I haven't seen that kind of lockup since the Windows 95 days in all honesty. I chalked it up to needing a reboot but after it froze in the middle of a job for my wife, it was no longer useful to her since that is HIGHLY unacceptable for her profession (legal stenography).

I messed around with Acer's ridiculous tech support, paid to order their recovery disks which fully should have been included to begin with and tried 3 reinstalls. My advice to anyone who CAN return this netbook, RETURN IT. The problems are frustrating and random. Don't bother relying on this computer for anything the least bit critical. That includes watching a movie in my book because I hate nothing more than to have a movie abruptly interrupted forcing me to reboot and fast forward to that location again.

I have been watching this thread since page 4 and bios rev -08 or so. This thing isn't getting any better and there appear to be no quick cures for it. Cut your losses if you can. If Acer gets enough of these things back on their doorstep they may change their tune. I won't be gambling on them next time around though. There are other 11.6" choices now.

BTW, my freezing happened when I'd leave it idling overnight. I had all power saving features off since that is what my wife required. Mine also froze when you were using it. Especially using Chrome. It would freeze with google earth when running xp but not vista.

 

Thank you for sharing. I'm not disagreeing with you but, ironically, most of the 1410 user descriptions at amazon are very positive.

Regarding the 751h and the 1410, is the problem a high rate of lemons, even as many and probably most of the 751h and 1410 Acer Aspire computers work ok within their design and equipment limitations?

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-AS141 ... ewpoints=1
http://tinyurl.com/ykylbao

Program complexity may be a problem. I have Photoshop CS4 which runs poorly on two otherwise well performing XPs with lots of ram. CS2 ran far more smoothly, and most of the features added into CS4 didn't add anything I needed. I would not have purchased CS4 had I not bought a G9 Canon, for which Adobe forced an updgrade to CS4 re: reading raw files. Yesterday, an Adobe list contained lamentations about CS4 not working with Windows 7. The CS4 complaints seemed parallel to the 751h and 1410 complaints.

Are the underlying difficulties arising because (for Acer) machine innovation and hasty equipment choices have led to a high rate of lemons and because complex systems that are altered (eg, CS4 on Win7 on individuals' specific hardware) have increased the likelihood of mismatch?

 

Thanks geordy for proving my point...

 

Mine has behaved very similar to yours after I swapped out the 2GB Kingston for 1GB Nanya. Just had 3 freezes in 2 weeks when the machine was idle but lid open. But it completely cured the webcam issue.

I am now testing Hymix 800mhz as this memory is one of very few whitelisted by Asus for overclocking. Only day 2 so far but rock solid.

Please test properly a week or 2 before you add to the confusion.

 

Re: Netbook freezes randomly - 1410 problems how to fix

For the Acer Timeline notebooks (to answer aspergerian): You just need to update the drivers if your system shipped with the older ones. That will fix the 100% CPU usage problem. Here's the 20 page thread!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=390992

Notice that they finally released a fix via updated drivers.

 

Re: Netbook freezes randomly - 1410 problems how to fix

Thnx for the specifics about driver updates for the 1410.

My 1410 with the Core 2 ought arrive later this week. I'll probably go for w7 and install as 64bit (if that's possible).

 

Okay guys, I thought that the computer overvolting might have had something to do with it... Faulty power supply/motherboard and all, so I went ahead and installed some PC2-4200 512 RAM into it this morning. Lo and behold, not a single freeze today, when I usually get at least one an hour (though I can't even begin to suggest that you do this, since the computer runs slow as molasses right now). I would, however, like to test inserting a 2GB PC2-4200 stick into it to see if the computer can take it. If I get another freeze, and this long no-freeze time is just a fluke, I'll let you guys know.

 

Strange that, I use CS4 on my 751 and it works very well, I even have Win 7 installed, perhaps it is because I have a genuine retail version of Win 7 installed, not a beta or pirate copy.

I can add my 2c about the 751, I have absolutely no regrets with buying it, it has worked as it should, though I have changed my RAM to Kingston 2GB and my hard drive to a WD Scorpio 320GB.

 

My CS4 is owned by me via purchase from Adobe. I'm happy that CS4 works for you. I didn't try CS4 the day I had a 751h, which I sold so as to purchase the 1410.

 

Yep Fauxpas, I registered on this forum to leave my $0.02 before leaving the 751H behind however I'll point out once more that I have been lurking here since page 4 of this thread hoping someone one here may come up with the definitive answer. You are right, people complain on the boards when things are bad but when things are great they seldom seek a forum. The numbers are most assuredly skewed. From an outside perspective it looks like these netbooks may have shipped with a batch of flaky ram since that seems to be the most common item that leads to a cure.

Thankfully I was able to return mine. Newegg took pity on me even after my 14 days were up which was extremely generous of them. Oddly though, the item is now in "deactivated" status on the Newegg site which leads me to wonder if they were experiencing an abnormally high return volume. I asked them point blank but they deferred to the default answer, "oh, it's just out of stock and we don't know when we'll be getting more".

 

You misunderstand me, I mean my Win 7 is a retail copy rather than a beta/pirate copy, not CS4.

I was trying to make the point that a lot of the Win 7 problems people experience could be down to them using old beta or pirate versions of Win 7.

 

Late last week, B&H offered "discontinued" for the 1410, even as J&R staff said they had many 1410s. "Discontinued" sounds hauntingly akin to "deactivated".

???

 

I'm using Windows 7 Pro with a legal key from Microsoft, activated, with all updates applied, and am still experiencing freezes.

 

I have noticed that this problem with the Acer Netbook is like a Hangover, there is thousands of remedies but not all work for everyone. Here is my story and my solution.

Bought a 751 250gig hd, 2gig ram, windows vista for 250 dollars from Craig's List (first mistake), so i can't return it. guy who owned it before maybe just wanted to get rid of the problem. So, turned it on and all good...for a few hours, than, black screen!!!

I tried different things to find out what would make it freeze i think is graphic overload, opening videos or opening multiple windows makes it freeze. I noticed it ran very slow also.

I went on line and read forums, found out that some people fixed it by upgrading to Win7 so i Shell out another $119 plus tax, and installed windows 7. NO luck, same problem but this time, the computer was running a bit faster and wouldn not freeze as often.

Ok so WIndows 7 made the unit faster yet still froze. so than i followed some else's sugestion, deleted the antivirus that is pre installed, and selected not to have the windows glass option. That is an option that makes the windows behind the one you are using look translucent or tansparent, also the task bar has the same effect, well i removed that option.

So i rebooted the netboook and used it for about 8 hours continuesly. I opened many program windows, opened webpages with and with out videos and all seemed to look good ....until.....I hooked up an external USB dvd player/burner , tried to play a movie and .... black screen again.

I removed the DVD player, rebooted the netbook and had no problem for the past 2 days. Netbook has not frozen once, and I use it A LOT!!
Tomorrow I will go to Frys and Buy a 2 gig ram and swap the one that's in it right now and try using the USB dvd burner/player.

Something tells me it's one or all three of these defective Video card - Video Driver or Ram.

So.... to Recap:

1. Remove antivirus (Macafee)

2. do not select the glass look option, shadows or even animated window draggin if available.

3. buy 2gig of ram and replace existing (keep invoice so if it does not help you can always get your money back).

And last I really Don't know if buying Windows 7 Helped, I was expecting the computer to work a little faster with Windows 7 since Vista was not meant to be installed in netbooks. So i would not say buy or don't buy Win 7 that is up to you. but i would do the other things first and see if that works.

Good Luck!!!!

 

About the 751, Windows 7 and Photoshop CS4, I used that combination without any problem. I tried 7 Beta, then RC and finally RTM (which was activated via "non standard" methods, as a test). Each worked fine, and please note that my 751 has the freezing problem.
About the "faulty RAM batch" theory, it's quite strange that broken products are sold worldwide: when you produce something, you usually make a batch for one specific region/customer. Anyway, given the number of faulty components, either they don't follow Quality production standards (ISO and IEC) and thus they don't test incoming and outgoing materials, or the problem is undetectable and thus unsolvable. In any case, Acer is loosing its face on this. They keep shipping this little devil and they don't want to recall the faulty ones. As soon as I heard of the 1410, I thought it was a good idea to swap my 751 for it, but immediately after I said to myself: "what if the 1410 is faulty too?"
I called the Acer support for the third time and they asked me to send in the 751 for a repair. Before that, I think I'll talk to the seller where I took my damned 751 and see if they're kind enough to give me my money back.

 

After I replaced the RAM, all the settings and tweaks that before gave a minor improvement, not longer makes a difference. For example, disabling DEP made my netbook usable to a certain degree before. Now its stable either its enabled or not. Same goes with disabling hardware, etc.

The RAM is certainly closer to the root problem than any other tweak/solution offered so far.

Day 5 on the Hynix now and still 100% perfect.

Loving this little thing more and more

 

24 hours later, the freezing came back and with a vengeance. Screw Acer. Seriously.

 

That's what this entire thread is about! It doesn't matter how long you've gone without a freeze (from 1 day to 1 year), there is an inherent instability or incompatibility in some of these machines. And Acer will not replace your machine. Not ever. They will only take it in for "repairs" that may help, but probably won't fix the problem completely.

When I got my machine back, my harddrive had 42 GB of test files on it from the Passmark BurnIn Test software (http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm). Basically they tool around with your machine until it runs stable for a few hours on the Passmark hardware test. Then they send it back to you. Repeat the process until you get tired of sending it back. That's what Acer calls "support".

 

Hello all, I have noticed that when mine freezes (open lid, being used), some black horizontal lines appeared on the screen. I have never experienced closed lid freeze.

I really think the video hardware/software is to blame. It doesnt seem like memory problem, as many have reported freezes with new memory, even the switching mem test from a good to a bad machine.

I have disabled ALL hardware acceleration and it seems to solve it (display advanced properties - troubleshoot - ironically the level indicated for nonresponsive computers) in XP. Running smooth for 1 day.

It sucks though, since no DX apps will run. But I think it's better than random freezes.

Could you guys test this too?