Aspire 6530G problems with S/PDIF and performance.

[OlliM85]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums so I don't know for sure if this is the right place to ask for advice, if it's not please point me to the right direction.

I bought an acer aspire 6530G notebook a couple of days ago and the first problem was that I couldn't get the digital output for sound to work. The jack I suppose is fine because headphones work fine(it's some sort of combined jack I've never known existed.) I have the right kind of cable(3,5mm jack for the laptop and rca for the receiver). This is really a-must-have feature for me and if I don't get it to work I will return this laptop to the specialized local dealer store I purchased this laptop from. I just would love to get it working by myself because I really have work to do with this notebook and waiting the laptop back from maintenance would be quite annoying.

Next issue, performance. The notebook ran fine, for the first day. After it updated itself a numerous times and I'm sure installed a bunch of never-to-be-used features, it feels rather like the 133Mhz Pentium that was my first PC. It's having a hardtime coping with youtube videos, not to mention, God forbid if I want to watch apple trailers in standard definition. Not a chance. And I know it's the CPU that's causes the freezing because I have task manager open and it seems to eat up 10-50% if the CPU capacity even when I'm not doing anything. Some sort of worm or virus? Another strange thing is, that when I look at how much the tasks eat up CPU, it could be something like 60-70% but still the task manager informs me it's 100%. Something hidden is eating away my performance and I want to find it. Find it and kill it.

I'm at a loss here, I was thinking about backing the system up and reformatting it but since I'm kind of new to laptops(yes, I never trusted them, now I trust them even less) I'm not sure if there is some critical integration between acer "ePerformance" software and the hardware installed in the laptop. Any tips or advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[frozenlead]

Well, to make you feel better, it's not your laptop that's failing you, it's the operating system (and some other piece of software) that's causing the trouble. So trust the unit!

Anyway, you should try and use system restore to get you back where you were before those updates. What did you update?

In task manager, windows will show what process is using all that power. Which is it? Also, take a look at how much RAM you have remaining (being mindful that windows Vista will cache RAM...this does NOT mean you can't use it, it means Windows has it in reserve) So add the cache and free together for your total "real" free memory.

 

[Guest]

Kill all application that autostart with vista...could be done with typing msconfig in the typebox of the bottomleft vistasymbol and than go to tab statup and deselect them all but the ones you really need . I only autostart my mcafee virus scanner...

I also have a 6530G that freezes randomly. After returning it to acer (took almost 4 weeks) they exchanged the Atheros AR5B91 Wireless Network Adapter for a Broadcom 802.11g etwork Adaptor. Until new no new freezes (tested only 4 hours) but maybe you have something about this info...

Regards,
Voerbeast

 

[Guest]

I'm not completly sure about the following information but that's what I just read on the net, I thought it could help.

As for your SPDIF problem, it seems Acer is using a combined headphone jack that also has an optical link. It's an headphone jack PLUS an optical jack in one. You need to have a "TOSlink mini" to "TOSlink" adaptor to get your SPDIF out of the laptop using an optical link. It seems there are no electrical SPDIF output.

Also, for your performance issue, I just reformatted my laptop and reinstalled Vista from scratch. It was a pain but performance issues are gone now. Google "WAU vista laptop clean" if you already have a license (you should if you bought the laptop!) and want to use the same on a clean reinstall. Worked for me. Ah and your Acer drivers are located in c:\ACER\Preload\Autorun\DRV

Good luck!

 

[puglet]

Remove all the crap software you get thrown in with the laptop, then make sure anything you have installed doesn't start when windows starts up. This will probably fix your performance issue.

 

[pikaru]

I think you should select the output method using the eAudio software.