My Laptop is Fried - Limited Development Activity

Tuesday, November 6. 2007

Since moving out to Pittsburgh I have been using my Acer Ferrari laptop at home for development, keeping in touch with people back home and trying to figure out some of the weirder rules out here such as driving licenses in this state. Last night I booted up when I got home and after logging in everything went a little funky - got I/O errors when typing ls for example.

I tried rebooting but it wouldn't even get to the GRUB prompt. So I got out an old Gentoo LiveCD which I had luckily left in my laptop bag. That got so far then failed to mount the drive. After a few reboots and a little wine (to calm my nerves ) I managed to access the drive. I thought I would try copying some stuff across to my external hard drive and ended up getting more I/O errors and some memory errors for good measure. Half the time when I booted from the LiveCD the kernel panicked when attempting to mount the hard drive partitions.

So today I am a very unhappy English man in Pittsburgh. Due to me having spent far more than I budgeted for moving out here, and then more again on flying my dog out, I don't foresee being able to replace it any time soon. This means my development activity will be limited. Not sure if compiling part of a KDE 4 checkout might have been what finished it off. Looks like some kind of motherboard issue. The trackpad stopped working months ago, now I am getting random memory and I/O errors and the CPU has been running hotter and hotter recently. It served me for just over two years which isn't great but I worked it pretty hard and it travelled a fair part of the globe with me too.

Still can't help being cheered up a little as I will be picking Dax, my overgrown German Shepherd dog up from Dulles Washington International Airport tomorrow (not Dallas as it sounded like on the message they left me which made me very unhappy when I first heard).

Update: My very nice and generous new boss has very kindly offered to let me use the group laptop in the interim. It is a MacBook Pro though using something called Mac OS X Leopard. I can keep hacking on Avogadro with it and I even know how to take screen shots with it now too! It is also capable of checking email and browsing the web so my Internet connection in the apartment won't go to waste. I am considerably happier now but will miss my KDE 4 and Linux fix

Posted by Marcus D. Hanwell in General, Gentoo, KDE at 09:49 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

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I started getting recurrent hard drive errors -- had to replace it twice -- on my old Acer laptop after a couple of years... perhaps it's a general Acer issue?

#1 necaris (Homepage) on 2007-11-06 10:10 (Reply)

Possibly. My intuition tells me it seems like an issue with the motherboard more than the hard drive. It always ran a little hot and had been getting hotter recently. It shut itself down once or twice due to the temperature I think.

It is really poor timing more than anything but I don't think I would buy another Acer laptop in all honesty.

#1.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2007-11-06 10:35 (Reply)

Is there no chance that Acer picks it up and at least has a look at it? Maybe they will afterwards tell you what would be necessary to exchange? And maybe you could collect some money to get it repaired or something? Make a list of software you've written for KDE or other projects and make a money call on the internet - it worked for the K3B developer!

Also, what about the hotline? Dell for example has a hotline which tries to figure out the problem together with you at no cost execpt for the landline call. Most laptops do have some sort of self-check tool integrated with the bios and can trace down general errors and in case of Dell they will try to use these on the phone together with you (usually press FN for 5 seconds during startup or similar).

Last but not least, if you have two memory modules, take one of them out, test the system again. If still doesn't work, switch the memory modules. It can always be that one of the modules went down the road.

#2 liquidat (Homepage) on 2007-11-06 10:38 (Reply)

Another thing which just struck me: your laptop is hardly older than two years. Call the Acer support next to your current location and ask them if they can have a look at it. Maybe there is even a three-year warranty? Or maybe they are simply fair and repair it for free? It is definitely worth a try!

#3 liquidat (Homepage) on 2007-11-06 10:51 (Reply)

Good suggestions. I will certainly take a look but lots of it is complicated by me moving to the US. The laptop was bought in the UK and only had a one year warranty. I tried the memory swapping thing and that didn?t help and have limited tools out here. Also would hate asking for cash and also am not even sure I would be allowed to due to the visa I am on. Although I would have to ask people to be certain. I will see if I can find more out on the weekend and really appreciate the suggestions.

#3.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2007-11-06 11:05 (Reply)

Word on the spending more money than budgeted for

My last laptop was an Acer - terrible, terrible design, things just kept going wrong with it, especially the power connection, which started to crack the casing!

"Heh" about the Dallas/Dulles thing - the same thing happened to me at the check-in desk in the UK!

Danny

#4 Danny Allen on 2007-11-06 18:04 (Reply)

I was wondering on the whole whether it was worth throwing more money at it. It just seems to run hotter and hotter, the power brick has been getting hotter...

Can't believe you got the Dallas/Dulles thing too - I really thought I would have to drive for days.

Did I send you my numbers? If you fancy coffee one day I could get a bus up to Shadyside or meet in Oakland somewhere?

#4.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2007-11-09 14:12 (Reply)

Given Gentoo/Prefix any thought yet? It's coming along in leaps and bounds! http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/

#5 welp on 2007-11-07 15:17 (Reply)

I am using Leopard - as I understand it they haven't got it working there just yet. I will take a look once it is working with Leopard.

#5.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2007-11-09 14:15 (Reply)

Marcus,
I stumbled across your blog while I was searching for drivers for my Ferrari 4000 which I am currently typing my response to your blog on. I am doing this because I had similar issues as you. I have determined that my problem is related to the motherboard and how the processor and video modules are mounted. I have managed to take my Ferrari apart and reseat things. This seem's to have fixed my problem (well for now anyway). As it turns out taking the thing apart is not a task I would recommend undertaking unless you've got time, tools and patience. That said I am pretty certain your problem is the mother board. I tried getting service/ help from ACER but unfortunately they are no better than any of the other computer companies which I have developed an enormous disgust for. Also, ACER uses the standard Toshiba hard drives and in my experience the drives are good for about 2 years. So I would recommend you image your drive and replace it with a new one.
Hope this helps.

Martin

#6 Martin Van Dijk on 2007-12-08 16:57 (Reply)

Hi Martin - thanks for the tips. I had wondered if it might be possible to reseat stuff. I have taken the laptop apart to a degree before in order to clean the fans. Unfortunately as I have just moved out to the US all of my tools are still in the UK. I certainly have not thrown away the laptop though and was intending to strip it down and clean contacts etc in the hope that it might be possibly to get it up and running again. I do have the service guide somewhere that helps in the assembly/disassembly process.

#6.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2007-12-09 13:43 (Reply)

Acer is horrid- Owned my laptop for ONLY 9 MONTHS and it started a fire in my house [not even one of their recalled components]...still under warranty!!! and they would not refund or replace- I don't feel safe with there computers in my house anymore and no to mention they have terrible customer service [not support, not people but getting things when it comes to getting anything accomplished they take forever and a day, they have no concern for business of the customer]

#7 D on 2008-02-05 14:29 (Reply)

I like my acer AS5670. Have had power brick issues but I just replace it and keep going. I have to agree that all that compiling may have done the old girl in. Maybe you should find an old spare computer from a co-worker, or ebay. Run distcc on it and use it just as compiling farm workhorse

Best of luck and welcome to the states mate

#8 James Walters on 2008-03-13 14:15 (Reply)

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