Acer 8935g - Using Wrong Display Adapter

Well, I finally got my Acer 8935G, and right away, wiped the hard drive clean of all the crap that comes on notebooks. In this process, I removed the "recover" partition... didn't think much of it at the time until I realized they didn't include a single CD with drivers or OS. Oh well, thats not the issue.

I loaded the computer up with the RC version of Windows 7 - and everything seems to be working great, except, the LCD is using the built in Express Intel 45 Display Chipset, and no the ATI Radeon 4670.

I have both devises listed in my Hardware Manage, and under display properties, but I am unable to set the screen to use the proper display adapter...

My other issue is - acer doesn't even have this model listed on their website as it is so new - they don't have any place to download drivers and neither does anywhere on the internet.

I was told I am one of the first to get this laptop in Canada... boy does this suck.

Can anyone help me out here?

Update:
They just added this product to their driver downloads - I installed the ATI drivers from them, without any success.

 

In europe the Acer Aspire 8935g has been out for a month or so, in limited stocks. I got mine around a couple of weeks ago and have had some problems using win 7 with it.

I did what you did and wiped clean, but you wont find win 7 drivers listed for any acer laptop as it has not been released and is thus officially unsupportable until late october. However the acer uk site does have vista/xp drivers listed for it here:

http://acer.co.uk/acer/service.do?LanguageISOCtxParam=en&miu10einu24.current.attN2B2F2EEF=3734&sp=page15e&ctx2.c2att1=17&miu10ekcond13.attN2B2F2EEF=3734&CountryISOCtxParam=UK&ctx1g.c2att92=122&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=2980211862

Win 7 was able to pick up almost everything via the built in driver update but as soon as i got to installing the ATI win 7 64 beta drivers this caused the laptop to lose all desktop items, and just hangs without rebooting.

You force a restart yourself and win 7 then reboots into a black screen, the system is still functioning as i am able to type my password and hear the sound as i log in so i am pretty sure the desktop is there but the screen remains black.

I had to use system restore to roll back the driver and now i have to use the built in intel graphics until they fix that serious problem.

I now dual boot vista 64 and win 7 64, any time i want to play a game i just boot in my vista partition, i just hope they get around to fixing the ATI driver issue though as it is incredibly annoying.

Regarding your issue, unless when you install the ATI driver it asks to reboot after completing then it has not installed properly. I had a couple of instants where it did not lose desktop items and appeared to complete but after manually restarting there is no catalyst option to click on when you right click on the desktop, thus it did not install properly.

On vista 64 i have no problems and can use the 2d/3d card switching button on the top right of the keyboard and it switches successfully, i would recommend dual booting in vista 64 until they fix these problems.

On another note i have noticed quite a visible horizontal line banding problem when panning vertically in 3d games, or watching any blu-ray or video playback. I don't notice it on normal web browsing so i don't think this is a screen problem but every time there is significant vertical panning these banding horizontal lines become quite noticeable.

Again i hope this is a driver issue as it pretty much ruins blu-ray watching or playing games as it is quite distracting, this happens in both vista 64 and win 7 64.

 

Thanks very much for the reply - it might be worth it to give Acer a call about this one to see if they are aware of the problem.

I had the same problems as you with the black screen, and restored aswell.

I managed to find the drivers on the Canadian acer site for my laptop, and installed the Fingerprint Reader software, along with the realtex hd audio software.

The ATI package seems to be the same as the one downloaded from AMD.

I also tried downloading the windows 7 amd catalyst software from the amd site, with no success.

Hopefully they fix this soon. Thanks again.

 

Hey 1v1 - I am just going to install a fresh copy of Vista until this is sorted out. Could you be so kind in updating me if you figure out how to get the graphics card to work?

Thank you muchly.

 

Quick question 1v1, were you able to get your 5.1 audio working in Windows 7?

I can only seem to get 2 speakers working with the drivers from the Acer website... no sub, no surround, no center... kinda sounds like crap.

Let me know, thanks!

 

I am waiting on ATI to issue a new set of beta drivers for win 7, it has been quite a while since their last set so i hope soon i can try again.

I only receive 2 audio channels myself, but i use a headset most of the time so i am not too concerned with the lack of 5.1.

By far my biggest concern is this line banding issue i mentioned in my original reply, it annoys me far more than anything else and hopefully once a few more people on the forum have this model they can comment to see if they have it too.

 

Hi! Sorry my bad English.
I have a very same problem in my Acer Aspire 5935G notebook. This notebook is uses hybrid technology, too (Intel GMA 4500MHD + Nvidia GT130M). The original Nvidia drivers don't installed in this sytem. She sayd: "Not found compatible device". Some days ago Acer released v1.09 bios for this notebook. In this bios, I'm simply switching between integrated and discrete garphics. I switch to discrete garphics, if I install nvidia driver I don't have any sucees. After than I would like to install fresh Windows the dislay turning black screen in discrete mod.

 

Hey 1v1 - I have full 5.1 sound and control using the W7 drivers from the Realtek website. They work and sound great.

No updates on the ATI issue yet - I am thinking that DJviolin may be right that a bios update may be in order.

 

Thanks for the update. My question to you though is do you see this line banding issue that i see?

Any vertical panning motion on screen, whether in games, blu-ray, any video playback or even web browsing induces these thin horizontal banding lines to appear on the screen.

I also realized that all i have to do is move my head up and down very fast in front of the screen for me to start seeing these lines, regardless of what is on the screen. So i still see these lines even if there is nothing moving on the screen as long as i am doing this fast vertical up/down movement with my head!

I tested this outside of windows to see if i could see the same effect at the reboot screen that says "acer", in a bios environment and i could still make out the effect.

Surely this means that no driver can fix this issue for me and it is either something wrong with my panel specifically or every panel is like this on the 8935g.

Don't get me wrong, the lines are relatively subtle but they are most definitely there every time ANY vertical panning occurs and it REALLY annoys me.

EDIT: Actually it's a lot tougher to spot on web browsing, if you have a blu-ray film to playback then this is really the best way to see what i am talking about, if you don't have that then try any 3d game and start panning vertically.

 

Or maybe it's the GPU, and not your display's fault, which would be sad, since I want that GPU pretty bad.

Has anyone of you two had opened the bottom cover of his 8935G?

 

The computer comes with 2 graphics card - its a "hybrid" to allow for a green mode when drivers are working properly.

I will pop off the back cover to see whats going on and let you know.

The computer has been very nice, except I can't use the graphics. And I dont want to put Vista back on here.

 

I can def see the ATI board in there... a big red PCB with a giant heatpipe attached to that. Cant see the intel chip, but I am sure its there.

Looks soley to be a driver issue with Windows 7

 

I have tried both the ATI card and the built-in intel in vista 64 and i get the same effect, until more people have this model i won't know for sure if it is just me. June is rolling by, would have thought some US peeps would have had some by now.

And by the way, on a seperate issue, the new catalyst 9.6 drivers still don't fix the windows 7 64 ATI installtion, don't know about 32 though. The installation does exactly the same thing and eventually black screens, i am still using vista 64 until they get around to fixing that problem.

 

@soaptray - Can you take some photos of the mainboard, heatsink, GPU, specially the GPU, please? BTW Why not Vista? I love it

@1v1 - Those are some sad news. Are those laptops came with "free upgrade to W7" thing? If yes, you wold definitely receive a properly working driver.

 

1v1 - I dont have any banding issues with Blueray playback. It looks and sounds great.

Ill snap some pictures later this evening. And yes, mine came with a Free W7 upgrade coupon... so they will be supporting it by October... lol

 

October is not that far away

 

Damn, it may really be a problem with my screen then. Once you get some snaps up, especially shots where some vertical panning is happening then i can be sure, i will try and get some batteries in my camera and do the same when i can so you can see what i mean.

How the hell did you get a W7 upgrade coupon and i didn't, that sucks! ACER must hate europe or something!

 

I was about to ask you, to do the same

Maybe you bought yours just a little bit earlier, or your retailer is not honest/generous enough

 

Fellow Acer 8935G owners !

I'd like to ask you a favour !!! Me and some other people (mostly acer 5930G users but not only) are wondering if we could upgrade our laps with the HD 4670.

So could one of you open his lap to see if the HD 4670 is mxm II compatible or not ?? If you could take a picture of the notebook inside and post it, it would be great !!!! ;-) thanx in advance !!!

Your 3dmarks score and gpu frequencies could be very interesting too ;-)

 

Take a look at this topic: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=381892 Everything that we know about upgrading to HD4650/4670 is there. To answer on your question, take a look at the last page

 

ok thanx mate i'll take a look !

 

Any fix for this yet??? Drives me nuts and would love to drop vista for this have it on my desktop and love it with a 8800GT but ATI has always been the worst of the 2 for drivers.

 

Nope, not when i last tried anyway, catalyst 9.6 does exactly the same as 9.5. It's had that issue almost 2 months now with windows 7 32/64 and thus i'm stuck using slow and bloated vista 64 until it's fixed.

Lame and sucky. But tbh, i think the picture is not entirely dissimilar for a lot of laptops, perhaps not as extreme as this issue but my sense is that the current Win 7 candidates are fine for generic widely used desktop configurations but it struggles with a lot of the more specific proprietary hardware on some laptops.

I have seen this on 2 laptops now (other is eee 1000he), on my 2 desktop machines i have had no problems whatsoever everything runs awesome with pretty good driver support. But it seems there are less optimized more generic versions of win 7 laptop drivers atm and this results in various effects like generally slower, less reliable performance and significantly worse battery life.

Again these are almost certainly driver issues, and once win 7 hits retail in october we are going to see that huge upsurge in specific proprietary laptop driver support.

However, RTM is around the corner, around July 13th, and once that hits we should start to see more and more driver support be released, many manufacturers are probably waiting for the final GOLD build before knuckling down for the support.

 

That sucks because as you said Vista 64 is a bloated mess compared to what ive seen in windows 7 since January on my desktop.

 

Exactly it. I keep going on to my friends to install the RC on their desktop as once you start using it you just cannot go back to a vista environment, it really is what vista should have been in the first place.

I am truly amazed at how incredibly rock solid and fast the RC is on my desktop machine, i have had mine installed since the RC release and i have not crashed ONCE, and everything is just so damn effortless and fast, you can really feel the OS just does not require the same horsepower to run that vista does.

 

I work in IT and this is the true upgrade to XP we have been looking for Vista is a nightmare to distribute throughout an orginization so we just left off after a couple laptops I had to roll back to XP.
If I find out anything I will make sure to post it.

 

Hi all new at this but here she goes. I picked myself up a 8935g-7791 about two months ago.. somehow that was before the so called release date... but I just walked into a computer store in the Barrie Ontario area and said order me a laptop with these features and the 8935g is what i got. I did however try to research the laptop well i was waiting for it to come in and could not find any information at all other then a press photo and small write up. I did sign up for the upgrade to win 7 which is cool. but i figured i would hold off on the wiping of the hard drive till i knew someone on here had done so with no problems. I did look into the drivers acer provides on the website and the tasks that run on the computer when booted up and to me it appears as though not all the drivers/software are available for download to make the 2 cards run together with out problems. I had this exact problem with an hp laptop and actually had to extract the files needed from the restore partition before wiping. I have also noticed that when using the Intel graphics i do get something similar to banding.. basically if you look at a black to white granite fade ( http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php) you would use to test a LCD monitor a band of the shades appears bluey-green. but after switching to the ati card it goes away not sure if this is the same as talked about earlier but figured I would mention to see if its just mine. I can see the colour effect well watching videos and it makes it hard to view. Also my volume knob is loose and rattles does anyone else have this problem? I am taking the laptop in for repair as it also had dead pixels so I mentioned the volume control when talking to the acer tech support. On another side note has anyone opened theres to look at the speakers? reason I ask is I feel as though there may not be a center speaker. If I use ac3filter well watching a dts movie and mute all chanalles other then center it sounds as though its coming from the right speaker as though both right and center sounds are emitted from the single speaker.

 

Has anyone tried installing this driver while plugged into an external display to get past the agreement messages? Was just brain storming and dying to get this on my laptop

 

A quick question, what color is the cover on the 8935g, I have seen some pictures that look like a dark sapphire blue and some that look black.

Thanks

Drew

 

It's dark blue

 

Any news about the win7 / hd4670 driver issue? Are there any new Acer drivers that allow using the hd4670 under win7?

 

I haven't heard of any new 7 drivers as of "yet". But I do know that when ever they are released I would look here first - http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewforum.php?id=45 (please note I can't condone the stability or reliability of these driver packs due to the OS and drivers being in beta still)

**edit** It looks like they have 2 sets of beta driver packs on the site, I haven't tried them and I don't have this model laptop so proceed with caution.

I can however vouch for the XP / Vista sets

 

has anyone looked in BIOS to try and disable the intel gfx? that way you should be able to install the mobility drivers as normal

 

well my 8935g has arrived. I have checked BIOS and there is noway to disable onboard gfx.

I just tried to install vista 64 ultimate but cant get the gfx to switch to the 4670!
The driver installs and the ati card seems enabled but as soom as I reboot it reverts to the intel and the 4670 has an exclamation mark against it in device manager.
Any ideas? I am guessing some of you guys have got it working in vista 64

 

Did you install the Ati drivers? They should work properly under Vista. After Vista is set up, install at first chipset drivers and then the Ati drivers.

Another question: does anyone have the PLL of the Q9000 to overclock it with setFSB? Does the PLL from the Q9000 in MSI GT725 work?

 

The most likely explanation for the Ati drivers not working under Windows 7 is the way Windows 7 handles DX 10.

If there were DX 9 drivers for this card many of the Vista => Windows 7 compat problems would be avoided. This is the reason why many "legacy" system cards work perfectly under Windows 7 (and Vista).

It's a case of waiting for updated DX 10 drivers and hoping that neither AMD nor Acer drop the ball with this card.

This, unfortunately, is one of the front stage ways in which Windows 7 is tangibly different to Vista.

 

Gaz - sorry but thats not correct. There is windows seven drivers for the ATI 4670, and a fair few laptop owners have the 4670 working fine in windows 7.

Our problem is there is no driver support to switch to the 4670 from the intel gfx. The driver has been specifically modified by Acer with the switching capability, if you check out the catalyst software in vista you will see the switching ability which is not normally visible in a catalyst install.

Acer will provide Windows 7 drivers as soon as it is released as they are offering the windows 7 upgrade. My main concern is how often will Acer update this driver as unless someone can find a way of merging the switch capabilities within newer drivers we could be stuck with old drivers

 

hi 1v1 dont know if this helps with your screen band prob but usually when u see a band when you have motion and also your moving head it points towards a scan frequency issue this often has to do with screen refresh rates,, id say you have a funny driver or the rewfresh rate is wrong, hope this gives a clue

 

Apologies - yes, didn't see a better explanation here and so thought - given the problems that people were having - that the DX implementation issues might be to blame. I have had problems with Vista to Windows 7 graphics drivers and eventually solved the problem by using a DX 9 driver.

If your diagnosis is correct then it is a very good reason not to buy the 8935g. It's a shame because in terms of value for money it's a very good system.

It's amazing that Acer has not provided Windows 7 RC drivers for their flagship laptop.

 

Just wondering if anyone has tried the new catalysts 9.7 out?

 

Well tried it for s and giggles on Vista since the driver build are virtually the same and its a mess seems we are going to need an Acer wrote driver with graphics switching options. Sorry guys I've tried my best but I've had it till we get some official support. Shame really I love win 7 on my desktop and it has the feel of a killer laptop OS.

 

Just got my new Acer Aspire 8935G and installed Windows 7 RC on the 2nd hard drive, allowing me to dual boot between Vista Home Premium 32 bit and Windows 7 RC 64 bit.

No problem installing any drivers *except* the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670. Exactly the same problem as everyone else - hangs after install and on reboot get a black screen. It was necessary to reboot in safe mode and remove the ATI drivers.

I've tried downloading and installing the Vista 64 drivers from Acer Support UK and from the AMD site. I also used the Update Driver Software in Device Manager, but in all cases got the same result.

I will continue to use Windows 7 as I'm not a Vista fan (have XP on my other machines) and besides, I'm using it to run database software rather than games at the moment, so I can live with the Intel chipset. It's still disappointing that this driver isn't available.

A couple of questions to other 8935G owners using Windows 7 RC:
1. In Vista, using the volume wheel causes a graphic to be displayed showing the volume level. I don't see this on Windows 7. Am I missing some software?

2. I installed the Vista 64 drivers for WiFi from the Acer UK Support site. Are these necessary (didn't check if the WiFi worked before installing them)?

3. I used Update Driver Software for the Intel chipset. Before the update, Device Manager showed it as "Mobile Intel 45 Express Chipset Family (WDDM 1.1)". After the update it shows "Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family". What's the difference between the 45 and 4 Express or are they the same thing. (I also noticed there are slightly new Intel drivers for the 4 Series on the AMD ATI site).

Thanks.

 

I also tried windows 7 and had no luck. Acer will have to release the driver as soon as 7 is officially released as they are offering the free upgrade. My biggest concern is if we cant update catalyst drivers ourselves we will have to rely on Acer for drivers, so I guess we will never get upgraded catalyst drivers

 

I have a question for all owners of the Aspire 8935G:

How much noise does this notebook produce? Is it silent/inaudible? Or do you clearly hear noise from it? If so, is this noise annoying? Does it have high or low tones in the noise? And is the most annoying noise coming from the harddisk or the system fan? I'm asking this since I maybe want to buy this notebook and replace the harddisk with a SSD. Maybe someone can test the noise of this notebook for me with the harddisk in standby?

Thanks very much.

 

For what this laptop is meant for I would say it is pretty quiet. You have to remember realistically this is a full powered laptop/Desktop replacement so it will not be a quiet alternative. Hope this helps.

 

Hi,

I've just received this laptop today, and did exactly what every one else is doing, and wiped Vista, and put on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM.

From what I can see, it is not drivers that are the problem, it's the fact the there's no Acer PowerSmart Manager which controls the switching. I've tried the one from Vista x86, but that doesn't install correctly.

Can someone with Windows 7 x86 give the PowerSmart Manager from Vista x86 on Acers site a go and see if it solves it?

 

Right Problem Solved. Well, a workaround, until the PowerSmart Manager is updated to support Windows 7.

I wiped all Partitions and installed 7 on the disk. The default Graphics adapter is the Intel one, which is onboard, as you know.

To get Windows 7 to use the ATI card as the default one, power on the notebook by using the "InstantOn" (the key to the left of Hold) instead of the normal Power button.

So to summarise:
Power button - Intel adapter
InstantOn button - ATI adapter.

 

I think it worked! Amazing job! I still can't install the ATI drivers but at least now it is using the ATI card via the windows update driver, it will do until ACER sorts this mess out.

 

Seeing as we're on the subject of the 8935G, anyone know where to get the caddy to fit a second hard drive?

 

I'm thinking of getting the 8935, and wonder if it sports exactly the same screen as the 8930. I've seen lots of positive word about the 8930's screen, but there not much info about the 8935's.