and hello from me

[dirk8837]

Good to have you back fsurfer.

Is not good news about your laptop, did you just buy a replacement or are you going to try to pursue a claim with Acer? Some people do have some luck either getting it fixed or getting a replacement laptop as it is an inherent floor with Nvidia graphics chips in laptops, I'm not to sure how much you know about it but it first started a few years back when Nvidia changed the type of solder they use, (they started using a lead free type). But it has since been found that the solder they use cannot take the stresses of the heat generated by the graphics chips over a period of time. I know the likes of HP and other big names did extend the warranties on some of their products because of this problem, although I think this may have finished now. Some people do have luck though with stating that the product should really last at least 5 years and going down the statutory rights route. Their is so much on this subject on the internet, it may be worth looking into.

Look forward to seeing you around the site again, and as always if I can help in any way just give me a shout

[VincentLupo]

Bad news about the compy but good news your back up. Look forward to seeing some new design.

[dirk8837]

What bad news.

It does seem like everything is going at the same time

Hard drives can be found relatively cheaply though, and you do not need to send it with the laptop as you can just say you took it out before sending as it has sensitive data on it.

Was it working before you gave it to the local repair company? and have you tried a different hard drive with your caddy? The amount of times I've seen it where it is the actual caddy that is faulty and not the hard drive. Is worth testing if you can.

[ctaulbee]

Welcome back

[dirk8837]

I don't mean to be funny but the repair shop does not sound very good.

Did you have a display on the screen? ie the post screen, the screen that comes up as soon as you turn it on. (it can disappear very quickly so it may only flash up for a second).

It is very easy to test a hard drive.

The laptop may or may not turn on without the hard drive in it (some do, some don't). If it does then you should just get a message saying OS cannot be found or hard drive not found if the hard drive is removed.

It sounds like your laptop was stuck in a boot loop, this normally happens when windows falls over during the boot up process, the system then restarts itself, you can turn this setting off in windows so the system halts on errors during boot, then you would probably get a blue screen of death message.

A boot loop would indicate that windows is corrupted and can be due to a faulty hard drive or an update gone wrong or similar.

If you have no display on your laptop then you can attach it to an external monitor and see if that works, some laptops will switch over to the external display automatically and some you will have to use the hot key combination ie the function key plus one of the F keys,( will normally have a picture on or above it to let you know which one).

If you do not get a display on the laptop and the display on the external monitor is corrupted then it is more than likely the nvidia issue, but if you get a good display on the external then it is not the nvidia issue and is something else.

With the hard drive it does sound like it is dead, but in future or if you want to test it then a good tool to use is the hirens boot disc

here is the info page

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

here is the download link

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

On this disc it has the manufacturers diagnostic tools on it, all you do is burn this image to a disc as an image and not as a file and then boot from it, then choose to run the diagnostic software for your make of hard drive, if it is not on their then you can use the seagate tool on this disc as it works with most makes, this will then test the drive (it can take a long time depending on how big the drive is) and tell you if anything is wrong with it. (I would recommend at first just doing a not destructive test, ie one that just reads the drive (surface scan) and not the one that reads and writes, the second will test it more thoroughly but will destroy all of your data.

I hope all goes well with Acer and they fix it for you for free, there is alot of info on the web with regard to the nvidia issue and it can be hard to follow as some info can be very conflicting but try and stick with reputable sites and you should get the right info.

[dirk8837]

I must admit I much prefer a pc as they are so much more flexible, apart from the portability of course.

Isn't the 310 an old model?

[dirk8837]

lol, I know that feeling.

Hope all goes well

[dirk8837]

That is good news

[dirk8837]

Thats really great news, I am pleased everything has worked out.

[VincentLupo]

You really lucked out. Glad you got it sorted.

[ctaulbee]

That's wonderful news bud

[VincentLupo]

You seem to be very lucky.

[dirk8837]

wow, What a lot of messing around, it has been a tough road but I am pleased it has finally been sorted out.

It looks like a very nice laptop they are giving you.

I think it shows they are a good company to be honest though, I know you have had alot of hassle and issues but they have stuck with you to the end and made sure you are happy with the out come (hopefully this will continue).

I think a lot of companies these days may have just tried to fob you off and kept fobbing you off until you went away but all credit to Acer.

Well done for riding out the nightmare and I hope your new laptop will serve you trouble free for many years to come

[dirk8837]