Chris’ posterous

Last night, I began to experience intermittant wireless connectivity issues with my Acer Aspire One Netbook (D150 Model). The network connection would drop and I would not be able to reconnect. I would get a message that no wireless networks were in range even though clearly they were, as other computers on our home network were still on and working fine. Since there was not a lot of data stored on the laptop and very few apps to reinstall, I decided to do a full system recovery back to factory fresh. This resulted in a weird issue where not only could I still not connect to the network, I also had this slowing down of the whole system. For instance, when the system rebooted and the Windows XP welcome chime would sound, it was all garbled, like something was running in the background and causing the sound file to play at a slower speed. Once booted, mouse tracking was slow and jerky, like there was a one second delay between moving the cursor and seeing the move reflected on screen. Apps opened very slowly, etc. Checking Task Manager was, as usual for this former Mac guy, a waste of time and an exercise in futility, as nothing there makes any sense and nothing was obviously running and using lots of system resources.

So, after 3 chat sessions with Acer support online, while I was waiting for a response, I unplugged the laptop, pulled the battery and let it sit about 5 minutes. I then put the battery back, plugged it back in and the problem was gone. When the rep came back from "researching" I told them what I had done. Turns out there is actually a procedure for doing what I had done - called a Power Drain. I guess this may be a known issue where settings get stuck in PRAM and need to be flushed to resolve a problem (old time Mac users will remember this as well - it was our version of the control-alt-delete to purge PRAM at boot time).

I have attached the procedure here so all can enjoy/share. I was worried I might have to send my little computer in for repair, and very happy this process solved my problem.

Acer-recommended "Power Drain" procedure for fixing pesky performance/wireless/etc issues

1.Turn off computer and unplug power cord.

2.Disconnect all external devices.

3.Remove the battery. Reference the Product pages for specific models.

4.Press power button and hold for 40 to 60 seconds.

5.Plug power cord back into computer and press power button.

6.Check front panel LEDs (lights) on bezel (front face) or optical drives and listen for power supply fan.

7.If LEDs are on or power supply fan starts spinning, watch for boot screen on monitor.

8.If computer begins to start, turn it off.

9.Reconnect any external devices.

10.Press the power button and make sure the computer starts.

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