discgolfdc Tracker

New touchpad for Acer Aspire E1-731-4699?

discgolfdc — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:25:03 GMT

Hi, all.

I have two Acer Aspire E1-731-4699s (both running Win7 Ultimate x64), and I understand that this model typically ships with a touchpad from one of three manufacturers - ALPS, Elan, or Synaptics.

One of my laptops has an Elan touchpad, and the other has an ALPS.

My laptop with the Elan touchpad seems to operate relatively normally, while the one with the ALPS touchpad is horrifically oversensitive to anything. I mean, a fly buzzing around my room could carry my pointer halfway across the screen, if you know what I mean. I have tried tweaking the settings in the ALPS driver, including setting delays post-keypress, and the only option that seems to have worked in the long term is completely disabling the tapping function of the touchpad.

I can't imagine that swapping out the touchpad for one from a different manufacturer would be a horrific job, but I suspect that it involves replacing the whole top portion of the keyboard casing, etc.

Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? I'd like to see if I can get both of my laptops working similarly to each other -- more like the Elan than the ALPS!

I've had relatively good experience with Synaptics, as well, so, again, I don't care if it's Elan or Synaptics -- I just would like to get rid of this ALPS touchpad that makes my computing life a bit of a pain.

Thanks!

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 21:35:13 GMT

The key on the bottom of your machine won't work for that. I'll PM you.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 21:34:06 GMT

I just want to confirm which version you installed... Win7 Home Premium, Win7 Professional, or did you install Starter?

Service Manuals

discgolfdc — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:57:39 GMT

Hi, all.

I'm just going to put my two cents in, here, and say that I truly believe that Acer service manuals should be made available for whoever seeks them out. Of course, a nominal charge would apply, but they should be available.

I have an Aspire E1-731, and would really benefit from having that information.

I imagine others likely feel similarly.

Re: OK, next touchpad problem...

discgolfdc — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 03:51:59 GMT

Worked like a charm. The driver files were not located in Windows\System32. They were located in C:\Program Files, but it didn't matter. I followed the directions the site laid out and upon next boot, the programs ran but no Security Warnings.

Cheers, and thanks.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 17:29:59 GMT

Glad to see that things are working out for you, and glad to have been of help. It can be harrowing, but diagnosing the fault in the system is usually the first step in getting past it!

Anyhow, with regard to SSDs, they're all the rage now, and I believe with good reason. The problem, currently, is, of course, the price. A 750GB solid state is currently running for around $400-$450, depending upon where you're shopping. By comparison, a 750GB conventional HDD costs around $45-60. So, if you're willing to pay 10x the price, I say go for it.

Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy to wait until the price on the technology comes down significantly, as it always does. Considering that I have backup drives that are upwards of 3 and 4 TB, I'd have to take out a second mortgage to fund that habit. Those capacities would likely run in the upper 4-figures to, possibly, around $13,000.

I say that if you're still messing around with Win7 Starter, that's not an OS that merits an SSD. You're perfectly fine where you are.

Re: Acer E1-731-4699: No options for Elantech Touchpad - This is killing me!

discgolfdc — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 17:55:05 GMT

Next issue with this...

After I installed the ALPS driver from the Acer site, the first time I rebooted the computer, I got four "Do you want to run this program" dialog boxes. One for each of the following EXEs:

Apoint.exe

ApMsgFwd.exe

ApntEx.exe

HidFind.exe

All of these files are located in the C:\Program Files\APoint2K folder which gets installed with the ALPS installation package, so I have no worries that they are anything malicious.

The problem, however, is that ANY time I turn my computer on, now, I get the "Do you want to run this program" dialog boxes. This doesn't seem like normal behavior for driver software. If it has to run some executables on startup in order for it to function, I'd think that this should all take place behind-the-scenes like all the others.

Anyone have any ideas with regard to this? I don't want to have to click "Yes" four times every time I start up.

Thanks.

OK, next touchpad problem...

discgolfdc — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 17:52:58 GMT

Model: Acer Aspire E1-731-4699

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

Okay... In a previous discussion, I got some help in resolving an issue pertaining to a touchpad issue on my laptop. The driver disc I burned from the on-board software with which Acer had provided me contained the wrong driver for the touchpad installed on my machine. Rather than it being an Elantech, it appears to be an ALPS. I suppose I can't know for absolute sure, since when I go to the Hardware IDs for the device, all I get is:

ACPI\AUI2013

*AUI2013

...and I don't know about you, but I can't find any such listing in PCI database. I've seen listings in Google, however, that point to both ALPS and Synaptics for this listing. The "Device Description," however, reads "Alps Pointing Device," so I'm confident that it's an ALPS.

My problem is with the software that I got from the Acer site to install that touchpad. After I installed it, the first time I rebooted the computer, I got four "Do you want to run this program" dialog boxes. One for each of the following EXEs:

Apoint.exe

ApMsgFwd.exe

ApntEx.exe

HidFind.exe

All of these files are located in the C:\Program Files\APoint2K folder which gets installed with the ALPS installation package, so I have no worries that they are anything malicious.

Anyone have any ideas with regard to this? I don't want to have to click "Yes" four times every time I start up.

Thanks.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 20:09:07 GMT

Again, it looks like a disk I/O error. Here's what I would do if I were in your shoes:

1) Attach the WD to another computer using a USB enclosure or SATA-to-USB bridge, and format it. Completely wipe out all partitions on the disk this way. Find out what drive letter gets assigned to it, run "cmd" and type "format D:" (without the quotes, and this example assumes that it was assigned drive letter D).

2) If (1) completes successfully, try installation again in the netbook. If not, get a replacement drive.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 07:12:00 GMT

With regard to your Error codes, the first seems to be an Input/Output error (0x8007045D). Here's a page that seems to suggest the same thing I'm suggesting to you (interestingly, also with a WD 750 GB HDD):

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/error-0x8007045d-the-request-could-not-be/17d085c8-bab4-4d31-9a2b-e7a4ba38d387

With regard to your second error code, have a look here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2476568

I would suggest doing CHKDSK as before, and if you are able to get the HDD in shape to install Win7 again, when install starts, choose the option to do the Custom install (not the "upgrade" option -- the bottom one). When it shows you the screen with the partitions, DELETE THEM ALL (you'll probably have to select "Advanced Options" for this -- go ahead and do that). Once you do that, you'll see "Unpartitioned space" with some big number of MB. Create one new partition with all the space available. When you do this, the installation will probably tell you it's going to create a small partition for system files -- let it do that. Once partitions are created, try again.

Any other problems, post up.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 07:00:11 GMT

Oh, and generally, you should have no problem installing a 5400 RPM HDD or a 7200 RPM HDD. Compatibility isn't an issue there. The only difference is disk access speed, and, again, that's not going to cause one drive to work in your system and another not to.

If you're unfamiliar with how to run CHKDSK, here's a site that helps explain that a bit. If you're hooking it up externally to another computer via USB enclosure or similar method, which I'm assuming you'll have to do since there's no OS installed on your Western Digital 750GB drive, have a look here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

Keep me posted, and I'll continue helping you however I can.

Re: Acer E1-731-4699: No options for Elantech Touchpad - This is killing me!

discgolfdc — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:52:34 GMT

It would appear that the touchpad is an Alps-manufactured device. All options are available through its settings, which include Tap-off while typing, which is awesome. This is the problem I sought to fix in the first place. The touchpad would cause the cursor to jump to wherever the pointer was in the middle of my typing something, which was ridiculously inconvenient.

Thanks, all, for your help. I probably should have known better, but when I created the driver CD from my on-board software, the driver it gave me was the Elantech one. Shoulda checked support's website first!

Re: Acer E1-731-4699: No options for Elantech Touchpad - This is killing me!

discgolfdc — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:35:40 GMT

OK, I now see the three different drivers. After searching my Device Manager for a Hardware ID, all I get is "ACPI\AUI2013", which turns up nothing in PCIDatabase (go figure).

I've DL'ed all three drivers and will see if any of them seem to do the magic.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 19:10:31 GMT

It is possible that the new hard drive is DOA. You can possibly hook it up to another computer and run CHKDSK on it. You'd just connect it via USB, run cmd.exe (command line), and run CHKDSK on whatever drive letter gets assigned to it. Or, you could just try installing to a different HDD.

Re: Acer E1-731-4699: No options for Elantech Touchpad - This is killing me!

discgolfdc — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 02:24:18 GMT

The Elantech driver is the only one I see. Hmmm... I'll check the PCI database for my part # and see if I need a driver not available to me.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 19:14:28 GMT

If you still have trouble after trying that suggestion, I'll post a link to the install file which I'll copy to Dropbox or something. I back all my executables and other utilities up to a NAS server.

Re: how do I re-install windows 7 starter on new hard drive in an aspire one D270- 1806

discgolfdc — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 19:12:18 GMT

Do a Google search for "Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool." The first result that comes up should be a Microsoft site. Look under the "Installation" section. There's a link there. I just clicked on it (6/25, 3:10pm EDT) and it works.

Re: Replacement keyboard frame for Aspire E1-731-4699

discgolfdc — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 17:55:59 GMT

From secure.tx.acer.com:

60.MG8N5.004

Description:   KEYBOARD GF7T_A10B 103KS BLACK US INTERNATIONAL W/MATT GUNMETAL KB FRAME / NUTS WIN8
Class:   COMPUTER.NOTEBOOK
Model/Family:   KEYBOARD
RID:   N

NEED THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Replacement keyboard frame for Aspire E1-731-4699

discgolfdc — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 17:52:47 GMT

The first part number is for US, which is where I am. 103 keys is accurate.

Now all I have to do is find someplace that sells this.

Re: Replacement keyboard frame for Aspire E1-731-4699

discgolfdc — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 17:47:33 GMT

Where did you locate that information, by the way and if you don't mind my asking?