[leigh317]

A year and a half ago, I bought an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop. A month ago, the hard drive randomly went bad. I brought it to a computer repair buddy of mine because I didn't know what happened and he said the drive would need replacing. I purchased a new drive and he installed it and proceeded to try and load Windows XP (a LEGAL, purchased version) onto it. The problem is, the computer does not read from CDs at ALL, and the backup DVDs I made the day I got the computer do not work either. Nothing will load onto this computer, even though the hard drive, motherboard, etc are all in good working order. My friend has never seen anything like this, and he's been in the computer repair business for 20 years.

Both myself and my friend have contacted Acer about these problems and tried to find a way to send it in to them for repairs (PAID repairs, of course, because my warranty is up. I don't expect them to help me for free) or get some kind of tech support. They hung up on me, and gave my friend the runaround before finally telling him they will not help. They refuse to sell me official backup discs (I did not get them with my computer as they said I should have when I bought it new), and will not help me at all. I NEED this computer for work and need to get these problems solved as soon as possible. I cannot afford to drop another $700 on a computer. Please, any help and input you can provide would help me a lot!

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Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
It could be that the drive (CD) is dirty, or bad.
I know that it worked fine before, these things just happen.
Have you tried another CD drive?
The issue seems to be that the CD drive is not working properly.

[hfcg]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
It could be that the drive (CD) is dirty, or bad.
I know that it worked fine before, these things just happen.
Have you tried another CD drive?
The issue seems to be that the CD drive is not working properly.

[SRX660]

See if this will help.

http://news.softpedi...-F6-47807.shtml

I also have a text file on SATA-no floppy install that is quite large that i can email you if you would message me.

SRX660

[leigh317]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
It could be that the drive (CD) is dirty, or bad.
I know that it worked fine before, these things just happen.
Have you tried another CD drive?
The issue seems to be that the CD drive is not working properly.

the CD drive isn't bad, as it reads DVDs just fine. Vista actually installed on the system from a disc (none of the backup drivers would work with vista, so I couldn't keep Vista instead of XP), and I was able to read both types of discs during this time.

[leigh317]

See if this will help.

http://news.softpedi...-F6-47807.shtml

I also have a text file on SATA-no floppy install that is quite large that i can email you if you would message me.

SRX660

Should have stated, it's a Parallel ATA hard drive. Would that still work? (I don't really know SATA vs. PATA, so excuse me if that was a dumb question)

[hfcg]

You are not going to be able to install XP on this hard drive unless you get XP drivers.
That is what SRX660 is trying to help you do.
PATA is a sales term to sale IDE hard drives as "new" technology.
Parallel ATA, or Serial ATA.
It does not matter if it is SATA, or PATA, you will not be able to load XP on to this drive with out XP drivers.
Could be that there are not any XP drivers for this Drive.
Then you will have to load Vista.