acer aspire 1360

karansar · July 24th, 2006, 03:18 PM

Hi all. First post here, and it's a problem!! So please be gentle with me.
Last week a guy at work brought in the laptop as named in this thread title. I know absolutely nothing about laptops even though I've built several desktops, but when he said that if I can get it working I can have it for £80, I jumped at it.

Hey laptops and desktops are worlds apart aren't they

The major problem was no power. I managed to find a break in the adaptor lead and got it up and running with a bit of wire twisting.
The dvd drive didn't work, so after a bit of fiddling, I bought a new one, a LiteOn S0SW-833s. It is now recognised in the bios all the time, unlike the old drive where it was only seen every now and then. Loose connection maybe?
Anyway, once I get into Windows, it's disappears again, ie, Windows can't see it.
I know the laptop is quite dated, but if I can get over this problem, it'll be ideal for what I want it for, which is a dvd player for when I'm working my long and boring night shift.
Please help me nail this potential bargain.

karansar · July 25th, 2006, 10:06 PM

Anybody got any ideas?

LaptopExtreme · July 26th, 2006, 02:17 AM

Do you have a spare HD that you can try installing Windows from scratch with the new DVD drive? You can also see if there's a new bios/firmware for that drive.

karansar · July 26th, 2006, 05:17 AM

That's an interesting one LaptopExtreme. Thanks.
I've tried upgrading the firmware and have flashed the laptop's bios. But installing Windows from a spare HD, I hadn't thought of that.
I have an external HD, and an XP pro image.
Now if I install Alcohol120 on the external, and mount it with the XP image, would it give me the option to install XP onto the laptop?
Sounds like it just might work.

karansar · July 26th, 2006, 05:32 AM

Just had a thought

If I mounted the XP image on my desktop pc, this one, and connected to the laptop via datalink cable, would XP give me the option to install onto the lappy?
It would save a lot of digging around for cables and moving the external hd about. (It's kinda stuck to my workstation).

DallasDon · July 26th, 2006, 06:44 AM

You might try downloading the user manual From this link before doing a reinstall.

There may be some utility that powers down the DVd when not in use to save battery power., etc.

karansar · July 28th, 2006, 02:13 AM

I've done much searching and fiddling about. Have eventually got the drive recognised by windows. I think I managed it by using forceaspi. But tbh, I'm not really sure. Anyway, I was quite excited until I put a disk in and got this message, "unable to read drive F: because of I/O error" (or fault, or something along those lines).Before you ask, I tried several other disks, getting the same message every time.
In desperation, I tried the mounting the image on alcohol, on my external h/d, I bet you can guess what happened next......
It started installing xp, rebooted and couldn't find the copy. Makes sense really. So now I've got multple OS choice on startup. XPHome or XPPro setup.
I'd like to get rid of the xppro setup choice, if anyone can tell me how.
If I were to buy an external cd/dvd drive (usb), would I run into the same problem on reboot?
A couple of questions there, or maybe three, if you know the answer to the I/O error prob.
I must thank you for trying to help me. It is very much appreciated.