When will Acer update drivers for the Aspire ES1-731 for the Windows 10 build 1803

I have a two year old Aspire ES1-731 with Win 10 x64 build 1803, bought brand new from a brick and mortar store, that has become so erratic, it is nearly unusable. Acer have not listed this model as being tested for drivers for the 1803 build, and it's driving me crazy! It's out of warranty, so I was going to put in a brand new HDD and install my licensed Win 7 Pro, but can't find the drivers for Win 7 for this laptop. They are on the Acer website, but only show as html pages. I missed the Win 7 rollback by a week, and I've been kicking my butt ever since. Acer has not answered my questions, go figure, but short of scrapping a two year laptop and buying another, NOT ACER, I'm stuck. Can anyone help a old retired guy get this thing running half decent again? Please, please, I really need some help. Thanks and have a great day. Claude

Accepted answers

JackE

Claude---Forget the old HDD. Take it out and put it on a shelf. You can certainly try to install Win7Pro on a new HDD if you change the BIOS to legacy mode, boot from your Win7Pro install disc, and let it configure and install Win7Pro on the new HDD. There are 3rd freeware device driver programs like iobit's DriverBooster that can scan your Win7Pro setup and recommend drivers for devices that don't seem to be working properly after installation. New HDDs and SSDs that are bigger and better than your old HDD are incredibly cheap and plentiful these days. Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

Hi Jack....Thank you for all of your help and suggestions. Libre office may have worked just fine, but I am so used to Outlook since my working days, it's tough to tackle something new, so I broke down and paid $20 Cdn for an office product key. Laptop is working great, with your help of course. If anybody I know needs help with their Acer products, you will be the first person I will lead them to. Thank you again for your help. Have a really good day....Claude

All comments

CMcMahon

I have been told before to dump Microsoft and go with Linux. I guess it's the thing of trying something new that you're not fully conversant with, that gives you that feather of doubt. Two other household Acer laptops, one with Win 7 bought three years ago, the other with Win 10 bought last year, are still running great. So, Staples messed mine up, changing from 8.1 to 10, miserable scoundrels. I don't have a licensed 8.1, and truthfully I'm not prepared to go buy one. I will look into Linux tomorrow, and see if it will hopefully work for me.

JackE

Hold on! Despite what Staples did, you may already have the OEM ACER Win8.1 license embedded on your mainboard. Do this. Press the WINkey + Rkey. Enter "wmic os get serialnumber" without the quotes. Its result should be the Win8.1 license key. Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

I did exactly what you wrote, and a window opens and closes with only a black screen just as fast, no writing at all

CMcMahon

Don't get too excited Jack, I'm just reading about Linux, and downloading the popular one, Cinnamon, to flash drive, just in case. I won't install until we've talked more about it, cause I still haven't read all the guidelines and install instructions, and whether I should, or have to uninstall Win 10, or leave it and just stop any further update installs.

CMcMahon

Jack It looks like I lost my last comment, probably forgot to click on post comment. I did what you suggested to try and get the 8.1 product key, but all that happened was a window opened and closed so fast like blinking, but nothing on the window. So I used a key finder, and here's what came up.
Computer name:LAPTOP-****

Windows 10 Home
*****-*****-*****-*****-*****
Windows OEM product key in BIOS:
*****-*****-*****-*****-*****

How can there be two product keys? Could the OEM key be for 8.1? I don't have an 8.1 disk I won't install Linux until all other efforts are used up.

JackE

Sorry about the wmic command. That has to be run from a command prompt or DOS-like window. Yes, the OEM key is the ACER-flavored Win8.1. The Win10 key is likely the limited-time freebie upgrade from Win8.1 that Microsoft offered Staples and everybody else to suck folks into Win10. Many who got early warnings about Microsoft's changed Windows life-cycle policies decided not to take the bait.

The hope now is that Win10 downgrade didn't corrupt or erase the hidden ACER-flavored Win8.1 recovery partition on your HDD. We test that by turning off your machine. Then turn it back on and immmediately press and hold the ALT key while tapping the F10 key until a recovery screen appears like shown in the video below. If it does show up, there are options to reset the machine to a factory fresh Win8.1 state or re-fresh while saving your personal files. Right now, we just want to see if this hidden recovery partition is still alive before doing anything more.

Jack E/NJ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFuWwuc2oH4

CMcMahon

Hi Jack Holding the alt key down and tapping and/or holding down the F10 key on the second try just booted the machine to normal use, no recovery screen. No cigar!! Next idea....

JackE

Turn the machine off again. Then turn it back on and immediately start tapping the F2 key to try to enter the BIOS menu. Check the Main tab and enable F12 and D2D options if they aren't already enabled. Then save and exit BIOS menu settings. Turn the machine off again and retry the ALT+F10 cold boot re-set. Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

Hello Jack F12 and D2D are enabled. On the cold reboot holding down alt and tapping F10 an error screen appears saying my PC needs repair with error code 0xc0000225. There was an F8 key to press and two other items then the error code and I'm sorry I forgot to write down what else it said. I did check and it is in UEFI but left that alone

JackE

OK. Shut it off again. Turn it back on and immediately start tapping the F12 key. Does a boot options screen appear? Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

Yes, boot option is there, and it shows Windows Boot Manager which is the hard drive

JackE

OK. Boot into Win10. Then right click on the Windows start icon. Search for 'Acer Care Center'. If it's there, try to start it. Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

I use Acer care center to get into our chats, it's open now

JackE

Can you open recovery management in the care center? Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

Yes, I can

CMcMahon

Wifey is calling, gotta shut down till after dinner. Thanks again for all your help Jack, I have a feeling you're gonna solve my problem, whew.

JackE

I'm not entirely sure what's gonna happen if you try to reset it from the care center since we don't really know the operating system history of this machine with certainty. Since it probably was originally a factory Win8.1 that was changed to Win10 during the freebie upgrade suck-em-in period, but never rolled back to Win8.1 during the rollback period, I'm gonna guess at best it'll return the machine to the Win10 version that was on the machine when you first got it from Staples. If it then acts OK, we can enable system protection and make sure automatic restore points are created in case an errant update makes it erratic again. That said, what do you want to try to do? Jack E/NJ

CMcMahon

Jack, as far as I'm concerned, everything you have helped me with has turned out better than I expected, so first off, thanks for that. I sent questions to Acer and never got an answer back, no surprise there. Seeing that there are two product keys in the BIOS, one way or the other, either it will refresh to 8.1 or 10. The first thing I'm wary of is that Win 10 auto deletes restore points, so is there a way around that? I'm willing to try the restore and hope for the best, and whatever happens it's my decision. I just hope to hell I can get back here and let you know the restore status. Thoughts??

CMcMahon

By the way, I have to close this page every time I post or I don't see your response. Is that normal?

JackE

Win10 by default inconveniently auto-deletes restore points after about a month. So any restore points that would've helped you are probably long gone by now. But just to be double sure, open Control Panel again. Search "restore point" without the quotes. Click on 'create a restore point' in the left pane. Then the 'system restore' button. Click next. Then checkmark box 'show more restore points' if visible. The date stamps show which restore points are available. Your issues probably started before the earliest available date stamp.

As for my invisible responses, you usually must refresh the page in your browser. In Internet Explorer, refresh is usually found in the view tab. In firefox, it's a circular arrow icon. if push comes to shove, you do exactly what you did, close the page. Then re-open it to achieve the same thing - a page refresh.

Jack E/NJ

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