Memory Issues on TM8204

http://img302.imageshack.us/img302/9986/untitled3ik.jpg

I am apparently not getting the expected bandwidth from my memory. Should I be concerned and can it be remedied?

I am using a 12/05 build with 533Mhz DDR2

 

Did you follow there tips? Have you noticed anything, I've not tried running this on my PC yet (beyond my work one).

 

Their solution was to check for background processes using the memory (there was none that I could see) or to enable L2 Cache in the BIOS (I'm assuming that's already on or else I can't change it anyway.)

 

Um, I'll run mine tonight and see, but honestly if you haven't noticed any issues I wouldn't presonally worry about it.

 

If you post your results, that would be great. If this really is an issue, do you think I could send it back to Acer? My hard drive also makes an odd clicking noise every now and then in conjunction with the hard drive activity light activating. Then anything I'm doing will pause for a second as the hard drive returns to normal. This seems to only happen when I'm not doing any system intensive tasks, i.e browsing the web or using IM. It sounds disturbingly familiar to the drive head hitting on something(and it just occurred again....).


*EDIT*: This hard drive thing is really starting to concern me. It honestly sounds like the drive read/write head is rebounding off something. I've heard a couple of hard drive crash and die in my day but those were with desktops. Laptops are a whole new ground for me. Any help would be appreciated.

 

*bump* I really need some feedback on this. I'm thinking of sending this back to Acer.

 

Well, here is what I can say, my Hard Drive has a similar slightly disconserting clunk noise every now and again, but given that it doesn't seem to have cause a problem I'm not worrying about it. I backup my hard drive regularly so I'm not worried about dataloss, if the drive fails I'll get them to replace it.

Memory tests through PC Pitstop with nothing else running (going through IE cause I couldn't get the Firefox version to work at all) I got speed of 7910 MB/s so almost twice the speed of yours. Whether yours has an issue or not, I'm not sure, mine is an original model (not sure of build date, but i got it about Feb 15th or so) what else are you running, have you tried the tests a few times? The only red flag on mine is hard drive, and that's because I've got 40GB of video files on the hard disk currently.

 

It had not occurred to me to test without anything running. I just ran the tests with nothing running and got a memory bandwidth of 6918MB/s (you might have 667Mhz DDR2 giving your higher numbers, in which case you're lucky). However, turning on Acer GraviSense severely crippled the bandwidth, bringing it back down to the 4000MB/s range. Thanks for your help and I suppose I'll just have to observe my hard drive some more and see if it warrants calling tech support *shudders*.

 

That's a bit wierd, when I said nothing running, I just mean't nothing beyond what normally runs on my PC when I boot it, I could give a list of the programs, but basically it's the Acer stuff, I turned off Acer EPower because I didn't find it very useful (and I dislike they way they had the battery power displayed) and have added AVG and KERIO (think that's about all I've added that runs constantly).

 

It is definitely Acer GraviSense. I just re-ran the test without it running and I'm getting similar numbers again.

 

Well no clue why that would be so on yours and not mine, I have Gravisense running, no real idea what it does, but I've not bothered to disable it either since it doesn't seem to be causing any issues.

 

"Acer GraviSense is an innovative hardware and software utility designed to further protect your data by automatically parking or aligning the heads of your hard disk drive when it senses a sudden change in a motion, thus protecting the drive - and crucial data - from corruption or damage."

Courtesy of Acer.

 

Maybe I have an older version or a software conflict somewhere. I don't know. But I don't miss it since all it does is stop the hard drive when a sudden movement is detected. I'm pretty careful about how I handle my laptop so I don't really need it.

 

I guess my questions would be, try finding out what is running, is this a "factory fresh" 8204, or have you been installing/uninstalling stuff all over the place on it.

If the later, then maybe something you have installed is casuing the discrepency, in which case listing what your computer is running at bootup might help.

Also, are you running the PCPitstop tests in Firefox, IE, or something else? Maybe that makes a difference?

 

It was factory fresh but I have been installing utilities, none of which cause problems (or even run in the background unless I want it to). I've also been pretty brutal on cutting down start up programs (anything over 20 is just excessive) and have everything down to the bare minimum with the things I want running, running. I run PCPitstop on IE and have the following programs on start up:

Acer Keyboard Drive (I'm figuring it's essential if I plan on typing anything...)
Launch Manager
NOD32 Control Center
LVCom Server(I believe it's essential if I want to use the WebCam)
Microsoft Image Message Editor
PHIME2002ASync (seems to be part of Windows for editing Asian characters, which I do need)
PHIME2002ASync (same entry, but different launch parameters)
TouchPad Driver Helper Application
Synaptics TouchPad Enhancements
Miranda IM

 

re the noise

A mate of mine hase the same on a Lenovo, whihc has something similar to Acer's GraviSense.
Apparently it's the utility parking the head of the drive where it cannot do harm i case you drop your notebook.
I don't know what is 'normal' here, since you really have to give attention to it.
I would suggest posing a separate thread polling other 8204 users on this.

re the memory
Gravisense (and ePower) can interfere with other .NET apps
Changing load order (e.g. with Startup Cop) resolved the problem for sonicdivx who had an interference between ePM/Gravisense and Topdesk.
Since you get about the same numbers wh Gravisense as Arla with Gravisense and you get a significant drop as soon as you enable gravisense, it must be something like this interference.
I don't know which other apps also use .NET (apart from LaunchManager) but NOD32 would be my first point of investigation. Just see what you get with NOD32 disabled and Gravisense enabled and seeif a different order of starting these two matters.

Strangely you seem to have two keyboard drivers
Acer etc. and LaunchManager
Maybe the first alse relates to you using Asian characters, but I would check it on one of these process sites (e.g. www.processlibrary.com, wh preference from my site)

If you care for a more complete (and free) second opinion you could download hijackthis from www.hijackthis.de, run it and copy the logfile in the box at the site.
It gives a full comentory on all running processes.

hth

Drio

 

Acer Keyboard Driver (Alaunch.exe) is what actually allows the 4 functions keys on the top right to work. LaunchManager is simply the configuration tool that's provided in the system tray. I don't mind having either around. And yes, the Internet Monitor Function of NOD32 uses some .NET functions, but I'd prefer having NOD32 rather than GraviSense. I will test out your suggestion tomorrow as I have GraviSense uninstalled. Is Startup Cop free, does it require an installation (it can't be run from an .exe), and can I remove it and keep the boot order once I have it the way I want? I'd prefer to keep program clutter on this laptop to a minimal (I'm a neurotic clean freak around computers, too bad it doesn't carry over to the rest of my life ^_^)

 

Alaunch.exe is the Acer Launcher. As far as I am aware it runs only just after factory install (recovery to factory status). It shouldn't be there after that (that is a few reboots later). So you can simply disbale it from starting.
Launchmanager also controls the 4 keys you mention (and depending upon version and model maybe also the bootup statusof wireless and bluetooth) plus all the other keys in combination with the Fn-key. Some (maybe most) will also work wh Launchmanager, but maybe the OnScreen displays will disappear (e.g. the OSD for volume up/down).

I wouldn't suggest running without a virus scanner! Just for nailing down the causes of your problem you could etc....

But given what you mentioned about Alaunch.exe still running I wouldn't be amazed if disabling it (from starting)and restarting already fixes it.

hth

Drio

 

BTW if Alaunch.exe is still there you probably installed XPPro over the existing XPHome.
I didn't even know that worked at all...

Cheers

Drio

 

Sorry, confused with other thread, it wasn't you who installed XPPro on machine that came with XPHome.

Cheers

Drio

 

Interestingly enough, Alaunch.exe isn't in my process list so I don't know if it's even running or not. But I have disabled it from starting on boot up as per your suggestion. We'll see how it works out tomorrow when I reinstall Acer GraviSense and re-run those tests.

 

Well if it only starts and looks if it needs to do something, it doesn't hurt normal operation, but just slows down bootup a little.
But it isn't needed after the initial factory install when it sequentially applies patches and installes drivers driven by an .ini file (i think alaunch.ini), whihc should b empty after going through the whole process of a succesful factory install. If it is still there with some lines init, it would imply that this process was broken (and breaks every time again), and that your factory install didn't complete successfully. (you could also check this by the existence of a directory c:\acernb which stores some of the patches before first boot,and is deleted by a batch file cleanup.cmd called by alaunch.exe.)

 

Test 1(No GraviSense): 7213MB/s
Test 2(GraviSense Installed & Running): 7418MB/s
Test 3(Reboot & GraviSense Running): 7078MB/s

That's rather interesting. Maybe I had an old version of GraviSense. It also seems that clunking noise reappears after GraviSense was installed and the system was rebooted. Maybe I just didn't notice any clunking noise last night(when GraviSense wasn't installed). The noise has reappeared and is occurring quite frequently right now (it's been 6 minutes after reboot). I'm going to uninstall and reboot to see if the noise stops.