Vince53 Practitioner

I hace two Acer laptops that I use at an orphanage, and they both work great.

Try the Universal Laptop Cure, guaranteed to work 10% of the time. Remove the battery and power cord and hold the Power Button down for one minute. Put it back together and try it out. Another cure is to start up the laptop and then remove the power cord to get the battery kicked into life.

That can happen. I would take it to a reputable computer repair shop and see what they say.

Courage, Stvn. Can you get into Windows 8 at all? If you can, it isn't hopeless. You have deleted all your drivers and are now running on generic drivers. Set your laptop to do automatic Windows Updates and leave it alone for a few hours. Then go to IObit.com and install their free download updater, but SET A SYSTEM…

Aspire, I asked you why you wanted to change your hard drive so that I could see if there was another problem involved.

You're right; it's not the monitor cable. You can try borrowing a legal copy of your operating system and see if that will get you to a repair screen. But if your CPU has failed, that won't work. If it is a BIOS problem, it might work. Did you do something to your BIOS before this happened?

Aspire, why do you need to change your hard drive?

Folks, there's a lesson here. How far can you change your hardware before you have a different computer? Once you change the hard drive, you have a different computer. I'm sorry, but that's whys so many people can't get Windows to work on their laptop when they change their hard drive. Laptops are more finicky than…

I strongly advise you not to install XP on a Windows 8 computer, because the hardware is incompatible. At the very best, you will get a poorly running machine. I advise you to take it back to Walmart for a refund. If your Walmart warranty has expired, it needs to go back to Acer.

This MIGHT work. I had the same problem, but I solved it with a System Restore. The next day it wouldn't work again, and I used System Restore. There was one specific Windows Update that caused the problem. I barred that update from being installed, and the problem disappeared.

Kandychic, the key phrase here is "no lights." Your machine is not receiving power. You have already tried to refresh the BIOS and battery software by holding down the Power Button when it is not connected, and that didn't work. Believe it or not, the most likely cause is that there is no power coming from the outlet.…

Welcome aboard, Dearsonyc. We would need more information, but I'll give you a general answer. You should not upgrade your BIOS unless something is wrong. The BIOS is not part of the Windows operating system and cannot be corrected with System Restore. If you lock yourself out of your computer, Microsoft will tell you that…

Juju, we would need a lot more information, but if you can't get it in, you should take it to a reputable computer shop. And bythe way, I appreciate your honesty. We get all kids of posts from people who did something like that and aren't honest enough to admit it.

Welcome aboard, Spimelad. There are several free internet tools that you can install that will tell you everything you want to know about your computer. Start your search at http://download.cnet.com/List-Computer-Hardware-Information-Software/3000-2094_4-75740105.html Speccy is a very popular tool that can be found at…

Mokes, SOMETIMES you can solve the problem by installing a different browser and using it to go onto Steam. Again, Steam has a LOT of defects on their system, and I don't think that it's a problem with your machine.

Elementary. When you turn on your laptop, the electricity has to work. You have to see if the lights are flashing. If the electricity is working, it turns on the BIOS chip. The BIOS chip will then turn on the CPU and send an image (usually an advertisement) to the screen, showing that the monitor cable and the monitor are…

Okay, you will need to download the free CoreTemp program to see if it is a temperature problem. If it is, a blast of compressed air into the exit vent WITH YOUR LAPTOP TURNED OFF should help. If not, a reputable computer shop can put in a quieter fan.

I hope the recovery disk works. But if it doesn't recognize your new hard drive, you can buy a complete Windows DVD for $180. At this point, you will have to research the value of your current laptop vs. the cost of a new one.

JC, you're a genius. We get all kinds of posts about batteries that won't charge when they should, and I´ll add your solution to my list.

Streaky, it will have to be the same version of Windows that you have installed.