What is "ePowerTray.exe" and why do I get xxx.exe has stopped working on windows startup?

16bit

Hey all,

 

Acer Aspire One D270Dkk

Windows 7 Starter

 

Occasionally get an error message when Windows has loaded saying something has stopped working.  ZoneAlarm Pro firewall "ZAtray.exe" does occasionally do this, as does an A4Tech mouse driver "Amoumain.exe", but mostly it's been "ePowerTray.exe".

Under MSConfig "ePowerTray.exe" is a startup item run from the C:\Program files\Acer\Acer ePower Management\ folder, and is run from the registry HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

 

There didn't appear to be any negative effect just leaving the system running with this application not running (crashed).  I did manually start it from it's icon, but experienced no difference.  What does it do?  What's it for?  Do I need it running or can I just delete the registry entry and move it into ...\RunDisabled\ (like I have done with other not-needed startup items).

 

What could be causing these crashes on startup?  Insufficient grunt from the 1.6GHz Dual Core CPU?  The lack of time delay on startup items?

 

Cheers

HK53T

epower is part of Acer Empowering Technology that does same thing as Windows Power Settings in Control Panel

may be some battery control but usually not needed

 

loading lots of softwarae for Windows 7 Starter

have you tried to reload to factory defaults

Reloading your Acer computer

davidgreene

Try doing a system restore to revert the changes made in the computer. ePowerTray.exe is an Acer application. You can revert the changes by doing system restore. It would the problem. 

 

When did the problem start? if you can remember the time when you didn't have the problem yet then restore the computer to that date. 

 

16bit

@ HK53T: Thanks for that.
Considering our system is, essentially, permanently connected to the wall power, I think power managetn for the battery would be as good as useless.

@ davidgreene: I don't think a system restore will fix it, my experience with system restores has caused more trouble than good to be honest - but then again that's mostly with XP.

It's not a big deal and doesn't happen every time, it's just sometimes after the desktop loads, the message comes up saying something has stopped working...yadda yadda...
It seems to be just those few items:
ZA tray (tray icon for zone alarm, not the zone alarm firewall itself)
Amoumain (A4tech mouse settings driver)
ePowerTray (as described here)
and there's one other Acer related program which I forgot before - it's the one that is responsible for the keyboard function display graphics, like turning WiFi on/off, volume up/down - all of those graphical items that overlay on screen when the Fn+[key] functions are used.

As I say, doesn't happen all of the time, and is essentially quite easily fixed (just runthe .exe manually).  It'd be nice if it didn't happen at all, but I dunno what caused it.  Seems to have happened almost at random, not after any specific program install.  If I think about it a little more, perhaps it's the time delay built within ZA which could be causing the "program has stopped working" issue.  I know ZA locks out the sysem for a short duration in XP, and it seems shorter on Win7.

Maybe I'll stumble across a solution (can't be faffed to spend hours on trouble shooting it).  Thanks