Hey My mother owns a laptop which is very cluttered with software, documents and junk files. It is very slow as a result. I want to format it and give her a clean laptop with only Windows vista and neccessary drivers and software. I checked the manufacturer's website and they provide a huge list of drivers for the laptop. Acer Europe - Service & Support, Drivers & Utilities, Downloads, Notebook, Aspire 5310 Each tab on that website contains a whole bunch of drivers and utilities. Do I need to install all of them? Some of them are just fancy looking junk that I won't use anyway, but I don't know which ones they are. Also, they provide something for the BIOS, but I don't really know what it is. Can I just format the laptop as if it were a pc, by popping in the Windows cd and using that to format the drives and reinstall Windows?
Yea just pop the CD in, format the HD and reinstall windows. The laptop probably came with drivers CD as well. But they are outdated to hell. Just download REQUIRED drivers only.You'll need the chipset driver, vga driver (intel or ati), modem driver, LAN driver, audio driver, touchpad driver, wifi driver, and finally the bluetooth driver...the rest is extra. Don't bother with bios updates. If the laptop isn't having issues related to bios, no need for an update.
and before you install all drivers, first install the LAN driver so you have internet access. Then do all the windows updates. Then install the rest of the drivers.
Windows 7 uses less memory and hd space than vista you should find a copy of it then it will download the drivers itself
Yea windows 7 can get them all from windows update..not a big deal if you know what drivers it needs already
Why not just do a factory restore? I believe on that model if you keep tapping the F-10 key, it will be an option.
I am under the impression that this method can leave stuff behind. I want it fully formatted and defragmented.
If you do a full factory restore, nothing will be left behind. All the drivers will be loaded, updates will still be needed (of course). It will have any extra crap that Acer ships their notebooks with but that is easy to uninstall.
Download Dban, burn it to a CD. Insert into comp, do autonuke, good to go. This will delete EVERYTHING from your computer, except the BIOS. So you can boot it on, and reinstall your comp.
Ok, so after a lot of trouble I have finally managed to install Windows XP. Acer has really done a lot to prevent you from not using their system software with all kinds of Acer bullshit programs. So now I've been installing the drivers and I cannot for the life of me get the wireless internet to work. The device for it is not listed under network cards in the device manager, but is instead listed under "other devices" (translation might not be entirely accurate because I'm using the Dutch version of Windows). Here it is listed simply as "ethernet controller". So I need to install a driver for it. I have gone to the Acer website and looked at what drivers they offer. They have 2 WLAN drivers, one from Broadcom and one from Intel. So I looked in the laptop manual and it says I have the following WLAN card: WLAN: Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG (dual-band tri-mode 802.11a/b/g), 3945BG (dual-mode 802.11b/g) Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® So naturally I downloaded the Intel driver. It didn't work. Neither did the Broadcom one. It is not recognised as a driver for my ethernet controller. So then I went to the Intel website, downloaded a few more drivers, also didn't work. Does anyone know what to do?
