I have an Acer 9303WSMI and my cooling fan is dead.Any knowlegde how to dismantle this laptop?How to enter the fan?

Acer 9303WSMI could be similar to Acer Aspire 9300.
Here’s the manual.
If this is the same model, in order to access and replace the cooling fan you’ll have to remove the motherboard.
The laptop disassembly procedure starts on the page 60.
Hope it helps.

I have this laptop recently the usb ports stopped working displays message usb device not recognized have checked out the device manager one of the root hubs has changed to device unknown i have disabled and enable the drivers uninstalled the drivers and restarted the computer many times also checked the acer web site for new drivers but no sign of anything useful

Probably this is motherboard related issue. Before you give up, test your laptop with Ubuntu OS (live Linux CD).
Burn Ubuntu OS on a CD and boot your laptop from it. Test all USB ports in Ubuntu OS. If they still do not work, probably this is motherboard issue.
In this case you can buy a PCMCIA USB card, plug it into the PC slot and get working USB ports.
If USB ports work in Ubuntu OS but not Windows OS, try reinstalling Windows OS.

I took Hard disk H2 from HP laptop and fitted it on the Acer Laptop . Even after this the Acer reboots and doesn’t find its hard disk now and then. i.e if you leave the laptop switched off and stationary for 2 hours – when you boot, the laptop will find its hard disk.

So I deduced it is a problem with the Acer Laptop rather than the hard disk.

I think you are correct, there is a problem with the Acer laptop and unfortunately I think this problem is motherboard related.
It’s possible the motherboard has a micro crack and that’s why it’s failing when you move the laptop (you basically flex the motherboard).
This is an older laptop and I don’t think it’s worth the motherboard replacement. Sorry for a bad news.

Or is it some bios issue?

Nope, it doesn’t sound like BIOS related issue. I’m pretty sure this is hardware related problem.

I have an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop running Windows vista. The laptop was never dropped or was subjected to any physical abuse. Off late it started to reboot all of a sudden and it will not find its hard disk.

I removed the harddisk (let us call H1) (SATA) from it and swapped it on a HP Laptop (having a hard disk H2) which took a similar form factor hard disk. The HP machine was happy enough to recognise this hard disk (H1) and continue to work with out any problems.

I took Hard disk H2 from HP laptop and fitted it on the Acer Laptop . Even after this the Acer reboots and doesn’t find its hard disk now and then. i.e if you leave the laptop switched off and stationary for 2 hours – when you boot, the laptop will find its hard disk.

So I deduced it is a problem with the Acer Laptop rather than the hard disk.

If you move the acer laptop or do something to its physical position (this also depends, some times it doesn’t matter even if you move, it keeps working) the Acer stops recognising the hard disk (irrespective of which ever hard disks) – The BIOS itself doesn’t show the Hard disk.

However after 2 hours of rest or something similar (after poweing off the laptop) – the laptop finds its hard disk and boots. Once booted if you don’t move it – it keeps working as long as you want or when it stops finding the hard disk due to some minor movement. Once it starts to have a IO problem , rebooting the machine however many times won’t find the hard disk once it starts to miss its hard disk – but after 1 or 2 hours it does find its hard disk ( no physical effort is needed).

The Acer is working with out any problems for days together if I am using a USB stick to boot and work with Linux which is on the USB stick.

I am making a wild guess that there is some connector problem between the hard disk and the control board – however the hard disk slots pretty well in the area it is supposed to fit.

I presume that the connection errors is on the other end (the connector to the board). Is it something fixable at home – what am I supposed to look for?

Or is it some bios issue? I have the latest BIOS available for this model from Acer website.

Any help is appreciated.

I have a virus on my hard drive (despite having Norton installed) and cannot boot the laptop. I have tried a number of things and having read a different website am going to try to mount the hard drive as an external drive to get rid of the virus.

If the virus is so bad, most likely you’ll have to reinstall OS from scratch. I would suggest reinstalling the OS just to make sure it’s virus free. You can backup data using an external USB enclosure.

I purchased a SATA enclosure but it does not have the right connector. Can you please help me understand exactly what HDD is installed on Acer Aspire 5100 and what enclosure I should get?

If it’s not a SATA hard drive than it must be IDE hard drive.
Here’s the difference: http://www.laptopparts101.com/hard-drive/
Also, read this guide for data backup tips: http://www.insidemylaptop.com/recover-files-from-broken-laptop/

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Jay

Trying to reinstall ATI driver on Acer Aspire 5100. Tells me the path is too long. Must shorten. ATI websight tells me it’s an ATI graphics1100.

Do it say that when you try to run the executable file?
Is it located in a zipped folder? Have you tried unzipping it and run from the unzipped folder?
Just a guess.