Acer Aspire E-1521-64BT

[martinb3152]

Wow, what screwed system this is on this Acer laptop that I just purchased. I accidently knocked my laptop about a foot onto the floor when it was in hirbernation mode. Now when I boot into Win8 which I guess I am stuck with since it has the serial number embbeded right into a chip on the board, I am getting framework message errors and that famous black command prompt box that has the c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe window popping up. I can't get a connection anymore and everything is all screwed up on this machine. To say the least, I am not very happy with this setup. Is this the trend of all laptops now? Are we going to be stuck using Microsoft products? What if I want to install Linux on this machine? I can't even get a dos prompt option at boot. At least I don't think I can. I have to do some more research about this. Anyone have one of these monsters and how are you fairing with it? I am thinking about sending it back and getting a HP or something, but I am starting to think that I probably am going to be running into the same problem there. You can't event take a cover off the back to upgrade memory! You have to to take the whole back plate off. Terrible machine that Acer built.
martinbr

 

[C12Friedman]

Although I can't claim to be a fan of Acer, this appears to be a HDD/OS issue and not the fault of their hardware or design. I think in this case you may want to send the laptop back to Acer for repair (you don't need to divulge the "how" aspect, just explain it stopped working), it would seem that your HDD needs to be repaired or swapped out, let Acer support take care of it. Or, you could run your backup-repair disks you made (you did make repair disks like they suggest right?) to reconfigure the OS (I suspect that is all that is needed here)
As far as your OS, you really aren't locked into Windows or any particular OS. Yes, the product key for Win 8 is built into the motherboard but does not prevent the use of any other OS the laptop is capable of running (various Linux distros, other Windows versions or...).
BTW, you do have a DOS prompt, the flashing carat after C:\windows...\cmd.exe if you type "CD\" (no quotes) it'll take you to the root directory (but that probably won't help you much)

 

[martinb3152]

Although I can't claim to be a fan of Acer, this appears to be a HDD/OS issue and not the fault of their hardware or design. I think in this case you may want to send the laptop back to Acer for repair (you don't need to divulge the "how" aspect, just explain it stopped working), it would seem that your HDD needs to be repaired or swapped out, let Acer support take care of it. Or, you could run your backup-repair disks you made (you did make repair disks like they suggest right?) to reconfigure the OS (I suspect that is all that is needed here)
As far as your OS, you really aren't locked into Windows or any particular OS. Yes, the product key for Win 8 is built into the motherboard but does not prevent the use of any other OS the laptop is capable of running (various Linux distros, other Windows versions or...).
BTW, you do have a DOS prompt, the flashing carat after C:\windows...\cmd.exe if you type "CD\" (no quotes) it'll take you to the root directory (but that probably won't help you much)

There is nothing wrong with the HDD. I just did a factory reset and I have the full working Win8 OS installed again on the machine minus anything that I personally installed on there which wasn't much since I just got the machine two days ago.

So, your saying that I can install any OS on there even though they have the WIN8 serial number on the MB? Actually now that I look at it, it's not a bad thing having the Windows setup on a chip. It's easier than having to put in Cd's back and forth to have all the drivers installed back on.
Martin

 

[C12Friedman]

There is nothing wrong with the HDD. I just did a factory reset and I have the full working Win8 OS installed again on the machine minus anything that I personally installed on there which wasn't much since I just got the machine two days ago.

Excellent, good deal.

So, your saying that I can install any OS on there even though they have the WIN8 serial number on the MB? Actually now that I look at it, it's not a bad thing having the Windows setup on a chip. It's easier than having to put in Cd's back and forth to have all the drivers installed back on.
Martin

Yeah, really it's a good thing since the last time I did an OS reinstall, I had issues reading the (near microscopically printed and quite worn) 25 digit product key and had to contact MS support to help me get the OS to accept it. You could even put multiple OS's on the boot disk to give you options when you start the computer, instructions for multiple versions of windows here http/windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/install-multiple-operating-system-multiboot#1TC=windows-7

 

[martinb3152]

There is nothing wrong with the HDD. I just did a factory reset and I have the full working Win8 OS installed again on the machine minus anything that I personally installed on there which wasn't much since I just got the machine two days ago.

Excellent, good deal.

So, your saying that I can install any OS on there even though they have the WIN8 serial number on the MB? Actually now that I look at it, it's not a bad thing having the Windows setup on a chip. It's easier than having to put in Cd's back and forth to have all the drivers installed back on.
Martin

Yeah, really it's a good thing since the last time I did an OS reinstall, I had issues reading the (near microscopically printed and quite worn) 25 digit product key and had to contact MS support to help me get the OS to accept it. You could even put multiple OS's on the boot disk to give you options when you start the computer, instructions for multiple versions of windows here http/windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/install-multiple-operating-system-multiboot#1TC=windows-7

Yeah, but that is for Win7. How about Win8? This is a whole different monster to deal with. I guess can. I might want to try it in the future, but for right now, I better learn the OS first and just keep what I have on the machine. It is kinda of neat that you don't have to install drivers and everything separately like older versions of Windows, so I will give a plus for there development of this. I will probably end up keeping the machine. But I just don't like the idea that you have to take the whole bottom plate off to get to the HDD or memory. That's a lot of screws....martin