New notebook, ACER7745, new guy. Need help starting up.

Hi; I'm new to laptops, I have a 7745-5782 that is not listed on Acer's site yet. (too new I guess). I have a 10+ year old PC that I will retire eventually. Can anyone give me any tips on starting up. I have the very basic instructions, but I would be glad to hear from experienced people if you can save me some grief.

 

Actually it has its dedicated support site however you can get more recent drivers from hardware manufacturers. If you don't know what hardware do you have on your machine you can use HWInfo32 to identify it and then visit manufacturers' websites for updated drivers.
Some drivers that can't be obtained this way can be found here- that includes Atheros & Broadcom wireless drivers, most recent touchpad drivers etc.

Your notebook is basically ready to go- what I would recommend is to burn backup eRecovery DVDs before you forget and create a second partition to store your data there (that applies only of your notebook came with only one partition).

Apart from that I would recommend installing an anti-virus software (and a good firewall), use Windows update and update more relevant drivers if you feel like it. At a later date when you know what is what and what don't you need you may get to uninstalling some of the software that came with the system- Acer tends to put a lot of bloatware on their notebooks.

 

Thanks downloads, for all your help, and the link. I'm still having trouble finding the support site, but I have not registered yet. I will make a backup disc and create a partition (when I figure out how to). I am not familiar with partitioning. I have McAfee Total Protection (purchased for the old PC) with two installs left. Will Win 7 prem 64bit have a firewall in it? I will search out all relevant driver updates and unload some of the bloatware.

 

Go here and chose notebook-->aspire--> scroll down to 7745 and click on it.
Yes Win 7 has a firewall- not a very good one though. Still it's something meant for a different sub-forum and depends on user knowledge level and expectations so let's leave it out of the equation for now.
To create a new partition go to control panel/administrative tools/disk management; chose your current partition- shrink it by as much as you want the new partition to be and then create a new partition from that part.
It may sound complicated but it isn't.

 

Thanks again downloads; I've got enough to chew on for the rest of the day now.

Oh; one more quick one if your still there. I registerred the unit and instead of it coming up as as7745-5782, it comes up as 7745-354G64Mnks. ??? Does that make any sense to you? Thanks in advance.

 

It's a European naming scheme. Basically the same notebooks have different secondary model numbers in North America and Europe. It shouldn't be a problem though.
354G64Mnks means you probably have Core i3 350M, 4GB RAM and a 640GB HDD.

 

You are exactly right. I see the logic now. I was going to make a back up and then realized that the drivers are not updated etc. Is there a specific point in the process that is the best time to make the backup?

 

Strip everything down that you don't need (3rd party programs etc that they put on), update all your drivers, install any programs that you will ALWAYS want.

Then backup.

 

If by backup you mean the eRecovery DVDs then no- no specific time because it doesn't use you current Windows install as a basis for backup. What it does is it makes a copy of a hidden recovery partition. So even if your Windows is barely running and full of different trash and bloatware - when you burn eRecovery DVDs you do not copy this barely running system- you copy the hidden partition.
My recommendation- burn them as soon as you have a quality DVDs at your disposal (ones that will be readable in a year or two). The only reason to do it ASAP is because people forget, then something goes wrong and they're left with nothing.

 

Meaker, downloads, thanks for your assistance.