Synaptic Pointing Device Driver

Have you ever encountered touch pad problem on your notebook/netbook? Recently I met one of my relatives who got this problem. She bought Acer One netbook a few months ago. At the first time, she bought the netbook, she didn't pay notice at the touchpad cause it seemed that when she was at the computer store, mouse was being used as pointing device, instead of touch pad. She realized this problem only when she brought it back home. But she still didn't feel it as a nuisance cause she used the mouse most of the time.

So, when she came to my house, I helped her fix this problem. I opened Device Manager and found that there's an exclamation mark next to synaptic pointing device. So, that's the problem of touch pad I thought. I tried searching for the driver and reinstalled it. Bingo! It worked perfectly after installing the driver. If you ever encounter this problem, just download the driver and install it. Isn't it simple?

Disassemble and Assemble Acer Laptop

How to fix and maintenance your laptop? It's not an easy thing compared to desktop PC. Laptop construction is more complex than desktop PC. They have almost the same hardware parts, but the main difference lies on the size and maybe the shape.

These are two videos I found at Youtube on how to disassemble and assemble Acer Laptop. The videos take about almost 10 minutes but it does tells you how to do the disassembling and assembling. Not so easy to understand but at least it gives you a brief understand. When you do it yourself, it's better you take photos of all the process or take the video during disassembling. This is because when you want to assemble it back, you have already had the pre-recorded video that guide you. Ok, let's watch how he does it with the Acer laptop.

Disassembling Laptop



Assembling Laptop - Part 1



Assembling Laptop - Part 2

Laptop battery dead

How to solve laptop battery dead problem? The best way to solve it is of course have the battery changed at the service centre. But this usually cost a lot of money. It may cost more than US $100. So, what to do? While I was browsing the internet, I opened Youtube website. And I found a video on how to hack the laptop battery. This video tells you what you need to know before hacking the battery and what to do about it. It's a very short video, but it tells about technical stuff about changing the battery by yourself. So it's a DIY laptop hacking video. Be careful when doing it.

Printer won't pull thick inkjet paper again

You probably met this problem and found that it's very frustrating when handling such problem. When I met this problem, I found that it's really annoying that the printer roller just won't pull the paper. No matter how many tries you have made whether by pushing from the top of the paper or bending the paper. (Paper here refers to special coated inkjet paper - whether thick or thin)

If you found such problem, you should consider trying another brand of paper. There are so many. Paper products are also categorized by price. You should not buy cheap and low quality inkjet paper which could probably cause this problem.

Another reason why this happen is that the part that keep the paper remain static in the tray is too tight, causing the paper has no space to move even a bit. Look carefully the process when your paper start going inside for printing. The paper would try to move itself a bit to the left. If it's held to tight in the tray, this problem will occur. I noticed this when I was printing using my Epson C110 inkjet printer with inkjet paper.

Upgrade hardware one by one

Upgrading hardware seems to be a need since software are very soon outdated if not upgraded. On upgrading software, we will of course need better hardware, so that it can support the software. When we are going to upgrade some hardware, it's better to install new hardware one by one because when something happened, you can remove the hardware you install cause you know directly and clearly what has caused the problem. If you install three or four hardware at a time, when your computer hangs or the screen go black, you will feel confused (this is important for beginner) and wonder which hardware causes the problem. You'll also be wasting your time with removing and trying. But if you upgrade hardware one by one, you'll save time for troubleshooting.

Taking out disc from CD/DVD ROM Drive after black out

Have you ever had this experience? Your disc is left inside the CD/DVD ROM Drive after black out. Well, I have such experience. I was at my friend's house using the computer. Suddenly, there was a black out and my CD was left inside the CD drive. I couldn't take it out by pressing the eject button. But how to take out the disc?

Well, it quite easy, all you have to do is to push the small hole (there's only one small hole) with a paper clip or something alike maybe a needle will also do. But I prefer using a paper clip. After the tray is ejected, pull the tray slowly and take out the disc. Just that simple.

You can put at least a paper clip as one of your computer solution tools. An eraser is also important for a technician when you want to solve some memory module problems. Search for my post on this.

Old mainboard IDE broken, mainboard useless?

Recently, my friend's computer has just broken. It just can't boot. I thought that the problem is with the operating system. But it's not. Then, I tried changing the harddisk with my good condition harddisk. I found that it seemed to be the problem with the mainboard. The IDE slot of the mainboard perhaps has broken. If this happens, it means you can't do anything with your harddisk. You can't install the harddisk. But very funny, I can boot from the CD ROM Drive. It should be the problem with the cable.
Then I asked a technician to check and he said that it should be the mainboard that cannot detect the harddisk. This means I can't install my harddisk anymore.
Should I throw away the mainboard since only boot from CD ROM? I don't think so. Perhaps I can use light weight distro Linux installed on a USB flash disk. Luckily the mainboard supports boot from USB flash disk. And I think that's the solution. At least I can use my computer with the flash disk for doing some simple office work.

Reinstalling hardware drivers

One of the solutions for solving hardware problems is uninstalling the hardware driver and then reinstall it back. If you are using Windows XP, you should uninstall the driver in Safe Mode. After that install it back. Of course, this kind of solution is applicable when you know that the problem lies in driver. And it should be really correct drivers with correct hardware.

Using compatible hardware driver or driver of the same manufacturer but with a bit higher series will sometimes solve the problem. For example, you can use Epson LX400 driver for an Epson LX300 printer. This is done when we couldn't find any drivers suitable for the hardware. Doing this should be carefully considered.

It's better to search for the problem solution on the internet. Once you get the solution, carefully read the instructions. Think carefully whether you can use the solution as computer troubleshooting is not something really that simple. Be patient when you are searching for the solutions. And always remember that you can always post your problem in any computer forums. You'll probably find the solution if you can't find it in the search engine like Yahoo! or Google.

Use better power supply

Power supply, like other hardware also comes with various prices and quality. Don't spend your money on cheap power supply that will make you regret after buying. When I was buying a new computer a few months ago, I was recommended the Simbadda Power Supply. It cost me about US $45. They also offered me a cheap power supply that cost only $10. I bought the $45 one. It seemed to be quite expensive for me, though as I had spent quite a lot of money on other hardware.

I don't know how good it is until a few days ago, a short power failure at my home. The lamps and fans were suddenly off for about 5 seconds, just a while. But what amazed me was that my computer was still running in that 5 seconds. I thought this could be advantage gaining from the better power supply I had bought that saved my computer from being off for about 5 seconds. Almost forget to tell you. Until now, I'm still not using a UPS.

Speakers malfunction

Two weeks ago, I put my mobile phone near a computer. Then, I walked away. Suddenly my phone rang, and the speakers of the computer near my phone gave out strange sounds. It's hard to describe the sound. It's like the sound of horse-galloping (It's what I think - probably not). If you want to know, put your phone near your PC speakers and call the number of your phone with another phone. You'll hear it. : )

Well, I am not going to tell you about horse or the strange sound. Guess, what happened next? The speakers seemed to be malfunctioned. It didn't give out any sound at all anymore after that strange sound. When this happened, don't panic. Don't think that you need to buy another pair of speakers first.

For beginners, when something happens, and you don't know what to do with your computer hardware problem, all you need to do (before you call a technician) is to restart your computer. If it still won't work. Try another tip. Shut down your computer. I mean turn it off, and wait a while at least one minute then turn it on again.

Yeah, that's what I did to my speakers. It's back to normal again.