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I got a new acer laptop a week ago and I just want to throw it in a bin. It's a core i5 480m with HD6550 gfx card and 2GB ram. The thing is it will just randomly freeze, like if I right click on the desktop it might take 20 seconds to see the pop up appear, if I click on the clock it can take 1 minute to see it appear. It feels exactly like when a computer is swapping to the hard disk drive and has run out of ram. You know that awefully slow experience that is impossible to use? Also had some sudden blue screens and random restarts.

I don't know why its stuttering like this... I restarted it and at one point for no reason the ram was 98% used up even though NO programs were running and the laptop isn't even hot. Even when task manager shows idle cpu and only 31% ram used, it still acts slow.

The thing is I do not know if it is my fault, because as soon as I got the laptop I reinstalled my own copy of windows 7 on it (i bought it in china and it was in chinese, besides who knows what might be pre-installed on a chinese bought laptop). Then I downloaded all the drivers from acer and installed.

I probably can't return it as I guess I already voided the warranty by installing windows on it. Any ideas? Thanks.

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Have you tried booting into a Live CD of a linux distro and seeing if the same stuff happens? If it does, then it might be your hardware. – MaxMackie Apr 3 '11 at 18:35
Installing Windows is unlikely to void the warranty – Sathya♦ Apr 3 '11 at 19:24
yea but what about using diskpart to remove the OEM recovery partition? lol – dan232342 Apr 3 '11 at 19:37
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You can toss it my trash bin. ;-> – Moab Apr 3 '11 at 20:50
what the bluescreens say may be of help - in pinpointing what makes it BSOD. Also, ALWAYS ALWAYS make recovery cds before nuking the recovery partition. – Journeyman Geek Apr 3 '11 at 23:57
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4 Answers

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Try starting it in 'safe mode' then see what happens, if the same things happen take it to a computer store, see if they can help. If you dont know whats 'safe mode' just google it.

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If you bought it in China, there's a chance that the hardware is not up to par. 2 GB of ram is not that much for Windows... Vista wanted 2 GB minimum, but Windows 7 is supposed to be a little better about using memory.

What version of Windows are you running? If you disable Aero, does it help? Try this tutorial for disabling Aero.

I don't think your graphics card has internal memory. It's most likely a lame on onboard chip. If so, this could be what is eating up your RAM.

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It's a HD6550m from ati it certainly has internal memory (1GB of it). The laptop does have also internal gfx and the option to switch between them. The cpu is the new generation that has onboard graphics. Also it was bought from mediamarkt, not a street stall. In fact its an awesome gfx card, i was playing black ops on max settings with it for a while. – dan232342 Apr 3 '11 at 18:44
Alright, I stand corrected. Did you try the Aero thing? If that doesn't fix it, try MaxMackle's suggestion. Could you also post the version of Windows you are running? – tjameson Apr 3 '11 at 18:51
Windows 7 Ultimate x86. It came with 64bit of windows but i decided to put 32 bit on it as the laptop only has 2gb of ram anyway. If the laptop wasn't such a piece of junk i'd probably buy an extra stick of 2gb ram for it lol. I don't have a linux live cd around and internet here is painfully slow to download. The hdd is encrypted with truecrypt (i always do this) which meant i had to delete the factory recovery pratition. Nice lol. – dan232342 Apr 3 '11 at 18:55
and yea i did disable aero – dan232342 Apr 3 '11 at 19:02
Ah, truecrypt could be the issue. Every time that you access a file or do anything, your CPU has to decrypt it. What settings did you use when you installed truecrypt? Depending on the settings, this could definitely be your problem. – tjameson Apr 3 '11 at 19:05
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When you installed Windows, did you do a clean install? That may yield a positive response: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Installing-and-reinstalling-Windows-7

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Run memtest86 for 24 hours. It surely sounds like bad RAM, to me.

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