Many Problems with Acer Aspire Revo/Aspire R3700

kwwb

Hello. 

 

My Acer Aspire Revo/Aspire R3700 (The naming of this machine seems to be unclear. The branding logo on one side indicates Aspire Revo, but the other side identifies it as Aspire R3700. Worse yet, the BIOS seems to think that the machine is a Veriton of some sort. Acer can't seem to make up its mind on the naming of this computer.) running Windows 10 has been having some problems lately. The first of these popped up a couple of months ago: Seemingly random blue screens. These were of the "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" variety. I reinstalled Windows 10, and the errors seemed to go away for a couple of weeks. Then another problem arose: Random shut-offs. Every once in a while the computer would just turn off. No freeze, no blue screen, no warning, no alert. One second the computer would be working normally, the next, it's completly off. 

 

Finally, we come to the past couple of weeks. One time the computer wouldn't wake the screen by pressing buttons on the mouse and they keyboard. I manually turned it off and turned it on again. The computer showed four numbers in the bottem right corner (something like 0033), then drawed the Acer logo line by line, as if it were the early 80s, and then produced one long beep tone. After a minute or so on the Acer logo, the Windows logo would show up and appear to boot normally. The Windows logo would then disappear for a long period of time, followed by a blue screen. Sometimes the blue screen shows the error "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" or the alternate string "VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE."

 

Sometimes the computer will get to the automatic repair feature. Enabling the startup settings option and booting into safe mode with networking would get the computer to boot, after about an hour or two at the Windows logo. However, it has the same line-by-line drawing problem I described earlier. This made things look excruciatingly slow. Closing a window looks as if the computer is erasing each line slowly off of a piece of paper. 

 

USB speed are also slow. Copying a 46 GB folder gives a time estimate of eight hours. It can't be the speed of the hard drive, as the hard drive previously backed up a 344 GB system in a smaller ammount of time.

 

Lo, that is not it. The random shut-off problem peresisted. Sometimes the computer would last an admirable period of time, like a couple of days. Most of the time it only lasts four or five hours. 

 

Now that's pretty much the extent of problems this computer has been having in the past couple of months. Here's some little factoids: This computer was bought in 2011, and has only been upgraded from Windows 7 (the OS it came with) to Windows 10 in mid-2015. It's connected to a monitor via VGA, but it's had no display/video problems before. 

 

Tips? Solutions? Advice?

 

Thank you. 

 

doughjohn

Hi

 

I run Belarc Adviser and Piriform Speccy and they do  a pretty good job of ID'ing Software and their licences, and installed hardware, even giving a MoBo type and serial number.  I screen print and keep for that one time when...

 

The DPC... seem to be errors with graphics and is mentioned by Microsoft

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/bug-check-0x133-dpc-watchdog-violation

 

Possible solutions abound around uTube.

 

So I would get a definitive on the Graphics Capability and look for alternate drivers.  It maybe a memory violation and I would consider the amount of ram installed and what, if any, is allocated to the gpu etc.