Acer Aspire 9420 Laptop
↓ Sponsored Links
This is what I bought the other day, an Acer Aspire 9420, comes with 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB Kingston Ram, 160GB Hitachi Harddisk, 1.3mp webcam, DVD Burner, WiFi, Bluetooth, Nvidia GeforceGo 7300 and it has a 17 inch wide screen LCD. This laptop cost me USD1,350.00 and hopefully it has a lifespan of 3 years. I have to admit that Acer is not my first choice, I have my eyes on Toshiba for quite sometime but Toshiba is expensive. Wish me luck! I’m off continuing my studies in Australia.
p.s. This Laptop does not come with a system CD, is this normal? I mean the book says if I want to restore to default factory settings, I am required to press a few buttons before the system boot into windows and restore it to default settings ( aka format c drive ), is this normal? Is this how they format a Laptop?
We Recommend
Stories you may be interested in based on past browsing
Comments
Leave a Reply
Roo
January 21st, 2007Hi - I’ve just bought the Aspire 5630 and we already have another in the household. The older one we have had for a while and although it isn’t a big name brand, I can’t fault either of them, they’ve not let me down at all
Cheers
Andrew
michelle
January 22nd, 2007thats weird that your laptop came with no cd’s esp. to reformat… usually it would - i know that my dell came with windows xp to reformat the drive if i needed to. i love my laptop… its soooo handy and stuff… haven’t really heard much about the acer, but let me know - cause i’d love to upgrade to a core duo processor… :)
El Cerrajero
January 26th, 2007‘This Laptop does not come with a system CD, is this normal?’
Yes, it is, alas and you have to burn the system rescue in several CDs.
Better make it twice because sh*t happens.
Good luck.
yuE
January 27th, 2007it’s true. Acer has a hidden partion drive that allows a reformat. it uses norton ghost technology to achieve this.
JayMonster
January 31st, 2007Unfortunately, this is the way most systems are sold these days. (Desktops as well as laptops)
El Cerraiero is wrong in that you “need to burn it to CD” some companies did that for a while, but as vuE correctly points out, it is now a “ghost” (or ghost like) system that does the work from a partition on the hard disk.
The problems unfortunately are twofold. One, in case you didn’t notice is that the OS is now tied to the system, and you can’t “take it with you” to another machine (as was the case in the past),and 2 if you get another hard disk (upgrade), you have a heck of a time dealing with that partition to install the OS on the new disk.
sylv
February 9th, 2007arrrrr i hate acer.. It always betrayed me. =(
Seriously I actually don’t recommend Acer.
emre kekec
February 12th, 2007Hi,
I have been using sony vaio for 2 years, and it is the best computer experience for me.
About system recovery, i also use f5 button. So its normal ;) Enjoy your Acer!
corza
February 19th, 2007Acer is crap
BMG
March 5th, 2007For everyone that has a an Acer….. Hope you never meet there service department. 4 weeks to get a part on a machine 1 month old!!!! 3 missed promise dates and hours spent on the service line and still waiting. When I pressed the technician if this was normal his answer was yes and the customer service guy told me to ring consumer affairs (in Australia)if I didn’t like the service.. hows that for support and service. For the Acer people it is model AS1652ZWLMI serial number AA.16A88.850GE.. I think I might start posting all the correspondence from now on.
mike
July 24th, 2007does anyone know where to find the acer serial number on my notebook to register my computer? if you guys do, please e-mail me Arthurccccc@yahoo.com
Jonathan
September 26th, 2007OK, I have an Acer Aspire 3100-1556, its a decent computer, but I have totally over uesd it. I need two format it and reinstall windows xp, but thanks to acer, thats gonna be a fucking nightmare. They made my 60GB HD into 4 PARTITIONS! What the hell were they thinking! One is 25.3 GBs for C:, the D: drive is 25.7, then I have the ghost partition, and then the rest is unallocated! I want to stick my Windows XP Pro disc in there and format and repartition the entire disk, but don’t know if I can. Damn Acer. Build your PC, its way cheaper and better.
Robert M. Paul
April 26th, 2008I just purchased an Acer Notebook Aspire and am looking for the site to register my serial number. Can anyone tell me the site for registering my laptop for waarranty purposes.
Thanks,
Robert M. Paul
MIke
May 11th, 2008all this talk and no resolution. No one even said how to get to the gost partition. This is my question.
strange!
May 16th, 2008i have the Acer aspire/9424. my problem is that i had the Vista in it when i got it, i dont like the Vista so i instal the XP. and then i lost my webcam softwear, and i cant find it, and the cant help me at acer, on the phone 4 some hours, any way i cant make the driver on there web site to work.
and the one guy i talk to said that i should just get VISTA! haha retard i said and hang up. i dont like vista. any one have the same problem>? my mail if you cvan help me. hast_werk@hotmail.com
ddr
May 20th, 2008You should be able to see a graphical representation of your hard drive and all it’s partitions (hidden and visible) by going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management and selecting Disk Management (in the navigation tree under storage). Be careful what you do when you’re there though!
Brett
June 30th, 2008ACER LICKS BALLS. I have one, Service is below poor, and product is faulty. Buy a MAC.
Admin Tools > Storage > Disk management will not allow you to gain access to the hidden partition. You need Partition magic or something similar. Make sure you take note of any original values you alter. If you change the type of its Partition from an OEM to NTSC (type 06 or 07?), you should be able to copy all the data from the hidden partition to a different location.
Unless you have time to funk with it though, it probably won;t be of much use to you (assumed, since you didn’t even know how to get into the hidden partition).
I recently replaced my faulty HDD for less than ACER wanted to repair the old one, and configured my new one to be able to run the napp (reinstall factory default) process. You have to make all partitions primary, meaning it must be in a specific format. I used Diskpart as it has a -? option, that gives you limited info, that wikipedia was able to ellaborate on.
Then you will have to investigate the prenapp.bat file and find out what other presets it wants before it will run correctly.
But recently, my burner gives me the blue screen of death on every attempt to use it, and my built in webcam thinks it is a removable USB device, and does not work at all.
ACER are CHEAP! and they make their money in the service department. If you know what is good for you, you will burn any of their products on a bonfire, so that it’s disease doesn’t spread to other household electrical goods. I am going to use mine as a surf board and put the video on youtube as a warning. I doubt it will even be good for that.
Good luck
Brett
June 30th, 2008Of course, you will need a Vista repair disk, or bootdisk with some basic utils to do any of the forementioned fidgeting if you run into trouble like I did.
Best to have made a recovery disc, from START - ALL PROGRAMS - MAINTENANCE ???
VISTA sucks too.
If you hate VISTA but don’t want to buy a MAC, build a hackintosh - google it.
Give microshit the heave-ho.
Almeda Jhimy
August 18th, 2008Hi, my name is Jhimy i bougth a laptop Acer Aspire 5100 so lost the driver i don’t know how you gonna help to find another one.
Joe
September 19th, 2008Jhimy - goto acer.com and select your country and then laptop - services and support and browse to your laptop model.
mike & Robert - There serial is on the back of your laptop. It is that white sticker next to the Windows COD sticker. The number right after “S/N:” is your serial number.