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Re:Before doing anything, please do the following:
Boot to Windows
Go to command prompt (Click Start and choose Run, type "cmd" without quote , Enter)
Type: "sfc /scannow" without quote
It will verify all the Windows system file and will prompt the CD if there is a miss match.
Reboot after the process finish. Hopefully you will get your system to the normal stage.
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Re:Originally posted by: guy
Make sure your hard drive is in DMA mode. My PC recently crashed and Windows defaulted the HD to PIO mode. It made start-up very slow and the PC generally ran like crap. I uninstalled the primary IDE channel (in Device Manager) and rebooted to get the drive back in DMA mode.
Didn't even think to check that. At this point though, it's too late. Started the recovery process which reformatted the drive, then the recovery halted at 63% and had an error. Apparently you can't even use the recovery CD's created with Acer's recovery software unless the recovery partition itself is intact. So now I'm basically sitting with a laptop with absolutely no way of getting an OS on it.
I emailed Acer to see what they're going to say. I'm going to be pissed enough if I have to ship it back just so they can install Windows on it again, I'm going to be even more pissed if I have to spend 100 bucks just to buy a copy of Windows MCE to put on the damned thing if Acer refuses to reinstall Windows. Then I'll still wonder if its a hardware issue that caused the BSOD in the first place. …
Side note.. anyone know if Acer is responsible to fix this at all? Even if it's just reinstalling the factory default software package? I've only had the thing for a month and a half. Are they going to tell me to STFU and walk because I reformatted the HDD? Kinda getting pissy thinking I might have to drop 100 bucks just to get a copy of Windows for a laptop for which I already paid for Windows (included in the price) just because Acer won't give me the actual Windows MCE media.
Digital Media Solution
Re:Make sure your hard drive is in DMA mode. My PC recently crashed and Windows defaulted the HD to PIO mode. It made start-up very slow and the PC generally ran like crap. I uninstalled the primary IDE channel (in Device Manager) and rebooted to get the drive back in DMA mode.
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Re:Originally posted by: guy
Absolutely nothing working. Won't even restore from the recovery discs or partition. I'd contact Acer support but their US website must be hosted on a server run by a hamster in a wheel. I have NEVER had their US site load at any decent speed for me.
Heh, either that or they have some bad HDD's in their servers. 
Start Your Own Window Cleaning Business
Re:Just a shot in the dark that fits your symptoms. Check to see if the drives / controllers are in PIO mode after that BSOD.
Jim
Everything You Need to Know About Windows
Re:Absolutely nothing working. Won't even restore from the recovery discs or partition. I'd contact Acer support but their US website must be hosted on a server run by a hamster in a wheel. I have NEVER had their US site load at any decent speed for me.
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Re:Originally posted by: guy
No more than 15-30 min on an avg. for an extended test, especially on a newer HDD. I'd say your drive is defective if it's going to take that long, which also explains your slow boot times.
Acer should send you a new drive without having to send your laptop in to their depot.
Going to give reformatting a shot just to see, if the drive is bad, this should fail too then I guess I'll send it out 
Think there's any way for the processor to be in err, and just causing really slow processing time which slows down the HDD analysis? I wouldn't be overly surprised if I did find a HDD error tho, I have been stressing it a lot lately (ripping DVDs to xvid for probably a good 8 hours a day the last 2 or 3 days).
Xp Windows Cleaner
Re:No more than 15-30 min on an avg. for an extended test, especially on a newer HDD. I'd say your drive is defective if it's going to take that long, which also explains your slow boot times.
Acer should send you a new drive without having to send your laptop in to their depot.
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Re:I dunno what Acer does for Aspires, but my TM8200 has a built-in recovery partition that will restore factory settings. Just download/install Grub Boot Loader and it will appear as a win2k/XP OS. Booting it opens the recovery console allowing you to restore factory settings. Default utility password is 0000 iirc
Windows 7 Ultimate Guide
Re:How long should the extended test take? Time remaining is listed at 32 … hours …
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Originally posted by: guy
Was going to scan the HDD with WD's DataLifeguard, but there's no option to do such a thing. Only thing I can do is retrieve information on the drive. Chkdsking now.
Sorry, I linked you to the wrong one. 
Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows (http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=3)
Yikes. Thanks! You've already been a fantastic help, I appreciate it. chkdsk died while verifying indexes due to "An unspecified error." So I'm going to start with WD's tools and see what I get.
This may take days .. I'm just trying to backup my Thunderbird email (800 mb) and it's taking 25-30 mins to burn to a DVD.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Was going to scan the HDD with WD's DataLifeguard, but there's no option to do such a thing. Only thing I can do is retrieve information on the drive. Chkdsking now.
Sorry, I linked you to the wrong one.
Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows (http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=3)
Re:Googling while chkdsk runs and I back up some data just in case. This mean anything to anyone:
"I have had my first experience of an infinite re-boot which seems associated to this agpCPQ.sys related (or relevant) problem. A customer's Acer Aspire WLMi is now back to a clean booting state after some considerable and I have to say experimental efforts. I firstly tried the Bios upgrade recommendations and followed various routes to do with other agp***.sys forums to no avail. I believe this laptop's problem stems from a crash during heavy 'game-play' in a graphic intensive app so I thoroughly inspected the ../../sys~32/drivers file using knoppix 4 on CD I could find no signs of obvious error or corruption, I copied a few files over from a healthy XPhome system in Dos mode (agpCPQ.. hal.dll) no change resulted. Next I tried a thorough work-through with Partition Magic again in Dos.. which failed to read the C drive spouting a non-specific read-error then a little 'simple thinking' struck me. No scandisk.exe was present in the C drive so I copied one in again in dos; a run revealed a fat error which it promptly fixed as well as several file errors in i386… this resulted in a normal(ish) boot up then some careful scanning and probing revealed some still resident errors which were fixed on the next re-boot. I now have some residual minor errors which are not greatly affecting system stability and performance, but there is a possible clue as to the origin of this particular problem… the ACPI mangement seems to be disabled or corrupted.. I will keep you all posted as to my findings, and the best of luck.. I hope this helps.
tweekyd
05-12-2006, 12:12 PM
…. The residual problem in XP after the fix I posted was 'Power management' being somewhat cobbled… several missing tabs in control panel/power options; leaving the laptop with no proper battery notification and power management features being mostly invisible and therefore near impossible to change. I believe this was caused by replacing the HAL.DLL in my 'fix' post above which was possibly part of the origin of the problem.
The answer was simple… In device manager- update driver of computer/ACPI-uniprocessor, select ".. from a list…" and from the list of available hardware choose another version of ACPI computer; I chose 'Advanced configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC'… this simply replaces the ACPI files and asks for a reboot. On start-up the power management features were found to be completely restored and all in working order. This absolutely non-booting, no recovery disc Acer laptop is now returning to it's owner fully fixed. I still have only patchy evidence of what causes this problem in the first place… some clues have shown up in the now working system … Windows Update may be to blame!
I will keep delving and post my findings soon. Hope this all helps."
from http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/…P-locks-up-when-loading-AGPCPQSYS.html (http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-21511-XP-locks-up-when-loading-AGPCPQSYS.html)
Re:Was going to scan the HDD with WD's DataLifeguard, but there's no option to do such a thing. Only thing I can do is retrieve information on the drive. Chkdsking now.
Re:Doh, looks like I didn;t edit my post soon enough.
GL 
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Do you have a true OEM copy of XP MCE to perform a repair (not clean) install? Acer doesn't typically include them anymore and only allows you to create recovery discs when you boot to the OS.
I'd still recommend testing the functionality and integrity of the drive as well.
Nah, I don't actually have an OEM copy of MCE. The only OEM copy of Windows XP I have is an old slipstreamed version of XPSP1 I made years ago. Will most likely have to end up wiping at least the system partition in order to recover which really doesn't bother me TOO much as long as I can keep my backup partition (the one I created, not the hidden Acer backup partition) intact with my data on it. If the Acer recovery wants to reformat the whole drive then damn, I'll have to spend some time backing things up first.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Do you have a true OEM copy of XP to perform a repair install? Acer doesn't susually include them anymore and only allows you to create recovery discs when you boot to the OS. Even then I am not aware of how to make a recovery disc work for a repair (not clean) install.
When I first got the laptop and installed the first few things I use (Gaim/ZAP/AntiVir/etc.) I made a backup image, I'll go see what my recovery options are if I boot from it.
Re:Do you have a true OEM copy of XP MCE to perform a repair (not clean) install? Acer doesn't typically include them anymore and only allows you to create recovery discs when you boot to the OS.
I'd still recommend testing the functionality and integrity of the drive as well.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
How long does it take to boot to safe mode?
I'd run hard drive diags on it. WD Data Lifeguard (http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1) will test non-WD drives if you use the windows version.
Report back and we'll go from there.
Was just going to post here, it won't boot into safe mode. Tried booting in with Networking support, it's been hung at
"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\system 32\DRIVERS\agpCPQ.sys"
for at least 5 minutes now.
Googling that file now.
Re:How long does it take to boot to safe mode?
I'd run hard drive diags on it. WD Data Lifeguard (http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=1) will test non-WD drives if you use the windows version.
Report back and we'll go from there.
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