Problems installing W2008 on an Acer 3680 laptop

[paulsiu]

Hi,

I recently attempted to install Windows Server 2008 32-bit on an Acer 3680, and it’s been nothing but trouble. So far, I have notice that:

1. The standard Acer video driver for the Intel 945 chipset I downloaded from the website does not work. However, a nore up to date driver from Intel does work.

2. The synpatic touch pad driver on the Acer 3680 site for Vista 32-bit did not work. However, a more up to date driver from synaptic did work.

3. The Realtek audio driver installed properly, but whenever I go into the control panel, the panel would crash.

4. Blue tooth does not work period.

What’s even more weird is that IE 7 crashes all the time. I am not sure what is wrong.

Paul

[JonusC]

@paulsiu wrote:

1. The standard Acer video driver for the Intel 945 chipset I downloaded from the website does not work. However, a nore up to date driver from Intel does work.

If it’s an Intel device, get drivers from Intel. If it’s an nVidia device, get drivers from nVidia. And so on. Some manufacturers say “Only get drivers from OUR website” but this is only for exotic modified hardware that is, well, rare as anything these days in the consumer/end-user market. Getting official drivers from the official site is the best bet and they will also be the newest.

@paulsiu wrote:

2. The synpatic touch pad driver on the Acer 3680 site for Vista 32-bit did not work. However, a more up to date driver from synaptic did work.

As above – this is not limited to Server 2008 but is a common issue that users of any operating system are prone to when upgrading their OS. Usually the manufacturer websites such as Acer and Asus and so on have dodgy, poorly encoded installers built over the top of the OEM ones.

@paulsiu wrote:

3. The Realtek audio driver installed properly, but whenever I go into the control panel, the panel would crash.

I also have a Realtek codec on my PC and Server 2008 works fine. However the “Sound Effect Manager” in Control Panel crashes when I close it, but I don’t use it anyway so it’s a problem im happy to live with. Anyway there are two kinds of Realtek sound cards – Ones which use the AC’97 codec [what mine has, budget sound] and one which uses a different High Definition Codec. Use something like Everest to find out which one you have then visit http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ to get the right one and try that. Or, you could just guess haha. Chances are, being an Acer laptop, it will have the AC’97 one.

@paulsiu wrote:

4. Blue tooth does not work period.

Windows Server 2008 has no bluetooth support. Period. The stack is not there at all as Servers have no use or application for it. However, BlueSoleil or Widcomm MIGHT work. But I can’t help you with that – if it wasn’t included with the laptop, you will have to find a hacked version compatible with your BT Controller. And I can’t help you with that sorry.

@paulsiu wrote:

What’s even more weird is that IE 7 crashes all the time. I am not sure what is wrong.

Is there any error with this or is it just “Internet Explorer has stopped working” or does it just completely quit/exit by itself without warning? Is it completely random or can you replicate the problem whenever you want? And if so, when does it crash? It could be anything, such as Java or Flash [if you have it installed]. Also make sure that you have all updates – there have been three or possibly more updates so far for Internet Explorer 7 in Server 2008.

Let us know how you go. Cheers.

[paulsiu]

Daniel

Acer 3680 has HDA sound, but I could live with the ac97. The IE7 crash problem is more problematic. Basically, IE7 will work for a while and then suddenly crash when I surf to a web site. I have tried to update my windows, but I am told that I already have the latest.

I tried playing around with the DEP setting and also turning off enhance IE7 security, but nothing stopped the crash. I did tried installing windows 2008 in a virtualbox virtual machine and it works fine, so there is some sort of compatibility issue with the hardware.

This is surprising since Acer 3680 worked fine under Vista Ultimate.

Paul

[paulsiu]

I tried running ie7 without protected mode, but IE7 still crashes regularly. I haven’t even install any add-ons yet, so it’s not the add-on.

The system isn’t particularly stable. The task scheduler regularly blows up, and so does explorer. I can’t even go the power manager without the machine blowing up.

I have been trying to get W2008 working with my Acer for a few days, and it looks like it’s just not compatible with my system. I’ll go back to vista since it works 🙂

Paul

[JonusC]

Yeah, that’s really wierd. Well I know that the Workstation Vs. Server distro’s of Windows do have some technical differences at the core/kernel, including the Hardware Abstraction Layer [has to be, obviously, heck loads more robust and stable] and the fact that Vista is fine but WS2008 isn’t puzzles me.

Could be CPU priority/quantizer settings set too low, but only if you’ve changed that manually in the registry so I doubt that.

But my theory is that Microsoft designed OS’s like XP and Vista, targetted at end-users, to be “friendly” when it comes to computing and calculating. It would probably have extra instructions at a kernel level to throttle and prioritise all I/O operations, to be safer on the users’ computer hardware and especially more stable on sub-par qualities of manufactured PC components. But a Server OS will absolutely drive the **** out of the hardware to deliver 100% efficiency with no priority for multitasking or I/O, because it is expected to run on Server-grade hardware that can handle the increased resource utilization.

This is probably the exact same reason why we have people in all these groups:
– Server 2008 seems faster than Vista, a little
– Server 2008 is OMG blazingly faster than Vista
– Server 2008 is slower and/or takes longer to do {so and so} compared to Vista, and
– Server 2008 does wierd stuff whereas Vista does the same thing 100% fine

…it is also for this reason why some users actually get better performance in games when setting program prioritization to ‘Background Services’ instead of ‘Programs’, contrary to popular belief. Can’t remember my point… something to do with x86 hardware still being lame? Oh – well, I guess your laptop doesn’t like Server hey. Sorry we couldn’t help 🙁

[Author]

Posts