PixlRabt

So I formatted the HDD instead of opting for a new one, reinstalled windows and it runs like a dream now. Pleasantly surprised at how zippy a machine this has become with a completely fresh install of windows, should tide me over well until my next laptop purchase. Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions.

So I formatted the HDD instead of opting for a new one, reinstalled windows and it runs like a dream now. Pleasantly surprised at how zippy a machine this has become with a completely fresh install of windows, should tide me over well until my next laptop purchase. Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions.

Cheers, I'll update this thread again with the final outcome once I finally reach it haha. Thanks to everyone for the help, who knew upgrading a laptop would be more of a headache than building and maintaining my gaming rig ever was

Cheers, I'll update this thread again with the final outcome once I finally reach it haha. Thanks to everyone for the help, who knew upgrading a laptop would be more of a headache than building and maintaining my gaming rig ever was

check for the manual for this notebook on the acer website. it should tell you how to get into the bios

I've got a Kingston 128GB SSD in my desktop, I'll steal it and see if it makes any difference before going ahead and purchasing another drive. Getting by on that University student budget, you know how it is haha.

So recently the HDD in my sisters laptop failed. After a short lived recovery campaign sentenced the drive to death, I took advantage of the situation to upgrade my very poor quality laptop by simply switching the HDD's and installing the RAM (which surprisingly was compatible) into the inherited laptop. So now I have a surprisingly capable and super snappy uni/on the road web browsing and word processing notebook, running an AMD A4 APU with R3 graphics and 8GB of RAM. My problem now is that anything more graphics intensive than youtube refuses to work.  I'm not stupid, I know this thing is certainly no gaming behemoth, but when it was in my sisters ownership I saw it fly through sim's and WoW with ease. Now it struggles with the Minion's game on the windows store, and just before writing this failed to play Splix.io for crying out loud. Have I missed something or is this computer really just a lemon?
 
(P.S. APU driver was updated, made no difference)

Can't figure out how to mark solved on the mobile site, but thank you, the information in that link was perfect.

Hi there @tharrison14!
 
You can use the standard steps on initializing the hard drive. Here's an article from our KB how to do so:
 
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865/
 
Hope this helps.
 
Cheers!  

no cd patches and things of that nature generally get flagged as viruses even though they arent. Just make sure its from a site that you trust...

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as long as your database was updated even after the expiry , you have no reason to worry , just install malware bytes once in a while and do a complete scan 

Wish they'd come to Australia

Wish they'd come to Australia

Wish they'd come to Australia

Wish they'd come to Australia

Thanks, thats probably what I'll do

That's precisely what I was worried about, and when I repair will it be like how it was before, all the files and everything? or fresh install and reset? it doesn't really bother me either way, I didn't have the PC long and I don't have anything on it.

Thanks so much for that link!

I installed one of the 5 drives into a different PC (another of the many hand-me-downs I seem to be acquiring since I told my friends and family I'm interested in PCs) and it recognized the drive in the BIOS but again the same screen appeared. I would assume then that the school has wiped the drives before giving them to me? 

Looks like a white Christmas tree : 

I got an Armor Revo for free, shame the feet make it look like a turtle:
 

 
 
But you can turn them forward and make it look more like a wiener dog:

 
And the HDD dock, well...