Windows updates that came out on 10/14/2010 screwed up my Acer laptop and it refused to finish Setup repair and crushed repeatedly. I tried to reboot from CD and USB as well as load Ubuntu and they all failed. So after spending 1 1/2 days pulling my hair out trying to resuscitate it, I have just about given up on Windows and Acer in particular.
This post is about trying to make my old Toshiba laptop work again. I had paid some crazy amount for it in 2005 before laptops got incredibly cheap. I paid some $1200 for a 486 RAM and 60GB HD 15.4 screen including 3 year service warranty with Office Depot. Anyway, it was really messed up along the way. After reinstalling XP, the CD DVD drive failed and although it showed it was "enabled" under Device Manager, it stopped working.
The Acer mess that has plagued me for the last 48hrs means I had to rely on my old and rather slow Toshiba laptop (painful but I am grateful it was there). Despite being a relatively machine it at least let me get on the internet and research for solutions to my problems.
First I had to uninstall Java and re-installed, and finally the Java Runtime environment and Java plug in work.
The next step was to find the drive for the CD DVD (model: ht-dt-st rw dvd gcc-4243n) I found out it is quite a common used CD DVD player by many second tier laptop manufacturers, Toshiba, Acers and some HP machines. Toshiba website listed it as a plug and play that it does not provide support for (sigh...) and that Windows should have the right driver for it depending on your operating system. The problems seems common, with many complaining of it failing and unable to read or write on it. Few solutions were posted and none seemed to have solved the problem for anyone (the reason for my post, as I was able to fix mine).
One of the forum answers suggested perhaps going to Microsoft Support for Windows and use Windows's Troubleshooter program.
First I had to download and install the Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Program, and ran it, it found the CD DVD, uninstalled it and then re-installed and could not believe it fixed it!!
Below is the link:
support.microsoft.com/gp/cd_dvd_drive_problems
It was a pretty easy program to use, and it was able to detect the problem and fixed it, so it is worth a try if anyone is interested.
I had given up on the dead CD DVD drive, was ready to order a cheap external drive from Amazon. Now it reads, and plays DVD, still have to test and see if it writes to it, may be not be without some CD writing program like Nero. I know Nero has a free version.
The next project is to update the RAM on this laptop, if it would let me go up to 2gb. Amazon has a great deal on a 2gb RAM.
It is useless to have max HDD to the tune of 500gb on one's laptop, as once your laptop is "kapuk", if you are not able to resuscitate your laptop through no fault of yours as in the case of my Acer, then everything is lost (or risked being stolen if you give your laptop away). It is better to have max RAM and just enough HDD for programs to run efficiently, then store everything outside the laptop on a external portable drive.
