Hi,
i have an Acer Travelmate 260 laptop which i bought off ebay, it's a good laptop and works ok, but over the last week or so when i switch it on the screen flickers on and off, when it's been on for a while it's ok, i am using it now and it's fine!
i downloaded a programme from the net to check the drivers and found about 8 are out of date and need updating, does anyone know were i can get the updates from? or if i can get a disc with them on?
also it runs slow at times,could this be the out of date drivers?

thanks for any help.

Just a quick note - you could try these websites:

Acer Europe

Acer UK

But be sure they are the drvers you need before installing.

I can not find the 260 model so assuming it is the Acer Travelmate 2600 (?) this is a direct link to the driver downloads available for that machine:

http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/downloads_gd.html

I would recommend that anyone backs up their drivers with Driver Genius Pro. The program and the driver backup should then be stored on a disc, or a seperate drive if you run multiple slaves, for those lovely little hard drive wipeouts that occasionally must be performed or on the occasion your drive just decided to die. You can get a free trial or if you are familiar with using torrents (or have a pirate firend) it is listed on isohunt.com as well seeded.

As for running slow, does it have a lot of programs installed in addition to the usual windows default stuff ? Since you got it off ebay and I dont know if you bought it new or second hand then I am guessing it may have.

Open up your task manager and click on the processes tab to see what is taking the most cpu. Sometimes its no more than a simple case of your browser being left open too long and hogging memory. Firefox is a bitch for that, for instance. If it is the browser simply close it and reopen it. If it is another process running away with the cpu - and you are familair with what it is and know it can be shut down without affecting the running of the machine - then do so. You can google any process name you aren't familair with to find out what it is and does before shutting it down.

Its also possible that there isnt enough installed memory to run windows. It is generally accepted that xp needs at least 512mb to run windows alone and that it easily overtaxed by running too many applications at once. Hence newer machines now come with up to 3 gig of memory and people with older machines would be advised to have a memory upgrade done as new machines were only sold with half a gig (512mb).

Finally, its possible the machine is virused or has a trojan if it is second hand. Check your antivirus is up to date and make sure regular scans are done.

Sorry for long post but hope it helps.

Seen a few of these have problems on their original hard-drives causing go-slows.

If you replace the hard drive, then you lose the recovery partition, which isn't the end of the world, as long as you have an installation cd of some sorts.

Windows update does the biz for some of the drivers on these. Used to have to be careful with some updates for the scratchpad, but I think these have been sorted now.

Hi mate, i had same problem with my acer, it turned out to be a loose cable between on the screen and motherboard

thanks for your replys, laptop has windows pro and it was second hand, i will read through all replys properly later, i'm not techno minded tho'!!

Ok then perhaps I should tell you how to open up the task manager in the first place. Press the Ctrl Alt and Del key one after the other and hold them down together and a box will pop open showing you what is running on the laptop. If you already knew how then sorry - not talking down to you honest ! If you didnt then you learned something new

have done that,but what's there is all double dutch to me,have'nt a clue what i can shut down! so have left it alone incase i shut the whole laptop down!!!!

As I said earlier google the name of the processes running to find out what you can and can not shut down safely. As a rough guide look to the "user name" tab next to the "image name" tab under Processes. Anything named as LOCAL SERVICE, NETWORK SERVICE or SYSTEM will be a windows process that should be left alone.

Pretty much anything named as "owner" or "your user account name" - with the exception of explorer.exe - is usually fair game as it is user installed and can be investigated further.

This all assuming the processor and memory are actually being overtaxed and that is causing the laptop to run slow. Again as a rough guide look to the bottom of the task manager at "CPU Usage: " If it is running between 0% and 20% you dont really have anything to worry about.