Problems with Travelmate 735TLV, XP Pro, ACPI and a USB thumb drive...

Hi guys,

I'm hoping to tap the infinite resources represented in here... I've bought
myself a second hand Acer Travelmate 735TLV from work to use as a writing
computre, chucked WinXP Pro onto it, and all seems fine, except one vitally
important thing. When I plug a USB thumb drive into it (any one, I've tried
a few brands and sizes) and attempt to access it through Windows explorer,
it freezes the system for anywhere between five and thirty seconds at a
time, making it virtually unusable. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to
happen if I browse the drive through a command prompt. A USB mouse works
fine in the port. Windows 98 doesn't have the problem.

I checked the system log in Admin Tools, and found a pile of ACPI errors. I
had these before on another PC running XP, and it turned out it needed a
BIOS update. Unfortunately, this Travelmate already has the latest BIOS
available, at least as far as I can find (version a8m). So I figured out
how to turn off ACPI altogether (Device Manager, Computer, Update Driver,
change to "Standard PC" instead of "ACPI PC"), and this solved the USB drive
problem, but it created
a bunch of new problems. Firstly, the computer would no longer shut down by
itself (it shuts down to the point where it says "It is now safe to turn off
your computer", like in the Win95 days), secondly it loses all of its sleep
and standby functions, and thirdly (and most importantly) it can no longer
determine battery usage, instead permanently showing that it's running off
mains even when unplugged. For a notebook, this is a pretty important
feature.

So, that's where I am. I figure what I need to do is either (a) find a more
recent Travelmate 735TLV (730) BIOS, or (b) find some brilliant way to
disable ACPI ONLY on the USB port. I read somewhere that someone changed
the IRQ of ACPI and this worked for them (though this was for a USB camera,
not a thumb drive, but it sounds like a similar issue), but I can't figure
out how to do that.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas? I'm considering selling the damn thing and
going back to my older, slower but at least working Dell!

yt MJL04
http://lonewolf.iinet.net.au

"Martin Livings" wrote in
:


Anyone have any brilliant ideas? I'm considering selling the damn
thing and going back to my older, slower but at least working Dell!



did you install XP overtop of win98? i'd try re-installing XP personally.
Also, i take it you installed the drivers before attaching the USB key?

Hi

Same problem here and it turns out that the Acer cannot use Windows XP
drivers with the BIOS. Wrote to Acre and they said they don't support XP
on the laptop, which just solidified the fact.

Unfortuneatly you can't do much being it is a laptop. I've reloaded 98 and
W2k.

cheers
tom

Hi

Same problem here. It is because the Acer BIOS chips can't take WinXP
drivers.

Phoned Acer and they said they don't support WinXP on the laptop, which
proves the point.

Being it is a laptop, you're kinda got your hands tied as to what options
you have.

It's not a bad laptop, but getting dated. A couple of things I didn't
like about it is the power button on the side and your HOME/END keys are
done with the Function key...dumb.

cheers
tom

Hi

Same problem here. It is because the Acer BIOS chips can't take WinXP
drivers.

Phoned Acer and they said they don't support WinXP on the laptop, which
proves the point.

Being it is a laptop, you're kinda got your hands tied as to what options
you have.

It's not a bad laptop, but getting dated. A couple of things I didn't
like about it is the power button on the side and your HOME/END keys are
done with the Function key...dumb.

cheers
tom