acer 2310 freezes

I was recently given an acer 2310 laptop. It was unused for a few months and it worked fine the first few days but then it would boot up and open windows and freeze. I have managed to do a system restore to see if that would work and it did….for a few days. Its now back to freezing when windows opens. I have checked the computer for viruses and it came up clean. I have all the disc's that came with the computer and i went into the start-up and switched it to boot from the cd and it will just keep loading the way it should and not from the cd. I am unsure of where to go from here or what to do. 09/02 ok now i tried to load up the laptop tonight and its telling me that i have a corrupt windows file. Ive never had a laptop before and unsure how to re format it. I have went into BIOS and switched it to load from the cd and yet again i still cant get it ot load from the cd to format it.

Chances are the windows file missing or corrupt is a sign of hard drive trouble.

It also sounds like you might have a bad cd/dvd drive, but you weren't real clear exactly what disc you were putting in the drive.

The drive will need to be checked for bad sectors before doing anything. Read here: http://forums.whatthetech.com/How_run_chkd…ole_t95574.html

Messages about windows replacing bad clusters during the chkdsk pretty much seals the deal on a bad hard drive.

If you can't get the discs to boot as described in the above topic then your cd/dvd drive is also bad. At that point you are better off just paying a bench fee at a qualified repair shop to tell you what all is really wrong before spending any more money on it.

i found a version of windows and am now re formatting the laptop…it booted from the cd this time no problem but i had a friend tell me also that it could be my hard drive. Thanks for ur time. If this does not work i am not going to be spending money on it. It was given to me to see if i could use it and if i cant its not a big loss for me.

i found a version of windows and am now re formatting the laptop…

On this Acer Travelmate 2310 and many other Acers, there is a recovery partition on the hard drive that will restore the machine to its exact factory condition, so it's just as if it came out of the original box….. it will have a fully functioning and activated copy of windows on it together with the Acer applications that shipped with it…

Let's hope that you haven't formatted this partition by mistake….. if you have then, then you will have destroyed the recovery parttition making it impossible to recover by this method….. .
If you have left the Recovery partition intact then this will have you up and running with a fully restored machine in less than 15 minutes. This is how to do it:

Restart the machine and immediately after pressing the power on button hold down the ALT key and press F10 key
If the recovery partition is undamaged then this will take you directly to Acer Recovery Management…..just follow the onscreen instructions.
If this does not work it indicates that you have lost the recovery partition so will need to use the Microsoft Windows installation disc, with the product key that is written on the COA found on the bottom of the computer……..
This latter procedure will be required if you found that your hard drive was unservicable and have replaced it with a new one. However if you buy the hard drive direct from Acer or one of their approved service centres, you can ask them to have the recovery partition included and this is usually done at no extra cost (over and above the cost of the hard drive.)

If you have used the latter method (fresh install using a Microsoft windows installation disc, then its strongly recommended that once your machine is running fast and sweet and configured just as you like it ( that is to an "ideal state") then take a disc image, keep it safe on removable media, verify it for accuracy and reproducibility and make a bootable CD (with a disc imaging application) then in the event that you ever hit trouble in the future that cannot be rectified in a timely or cost effective way by the normal means, you will be able to reimage your machine back to your "ideal state" in less time than it takes to walk the dog!
Post back if you need details of disc imaging software, there are commercial (paid for) applications, but also lots of free ones that are perfectly satisfactory.
Regards
paws