Back in October/November time I got myself a new laptop for university and general showyness. I didn’t want to spend too much money and, following a recommendation from a friend, decided to check out LaptopsDirect.co.uk. Soon enough I’d plumped for the Acer Aspire 5003 wlmi – a 64-bit AMD-based laptop with 512MB of RAM. Having taken note of the 64-bit Turion mobile processor, I initially found it highly strange that the laptop shipped with a 32-bit version of Windows XP Home, rendering the 64-bit processor about as much use as a chocolate teapot (OK, as much use as a 32-bit processor anyway). Then again, this is the same machine which for some reason has a hard drive partitioned into two 40GB volumes, both formatted using the FAT32 file system. Honest to God.
I realise there are issues with drivers with x64 machines and put the perplexing decision to ship 32-bit Windows down to that, however after a lot of hunting a thread Planet AMD64 provided links to x64 drivers for both Acer’s Ferarri 4000 range and their Aspire 5020, which seem to work for the 5000 series too. Maybe it was just laziness.
Between these two sets of drivers I managed to install nearly everything I need on my x64 edition of Windows just before Christmas, though I kept it dual-booting with XP Home just to be on the safe side. The only thing that didn’t work is Acer’s “eManager” and “Launch Manager” which enables the tiny buttons above your keyboard to launch your browser, your email and, unfortunately, the eManager software which controls the brightness of your screen. One of the two sets of driver’s I downloaded for these tools insisted on installing itself in the C: drive, but since my XP Home install lives there, I just cancelled the installation rather than take the chance of breaking something there.
I’ve since got fed up with the whole ordeal and gone back to my XP Home. I’m a bit annoyed that Acer’s x64 support for the machine is non-existant (it won’t run Vista due to the lack of 1GB RAM). The machine was only a month or so old at the time, so it’s not like it was out of date by the time XP x64 was released. It’s just lazy and poor service. What’s the point of a 64-bit processor if you won’t let users run a 64-bit OS? Answers on a postcard please…
in my aspirer 5003 wlmi model laptop there is not supporting autocad 2007
and the running os is ms windows xp home edition. how can i solve this problem. plz reply me.
ok thank
dipendra
from Kathmandu Nepal
Firstly, I know nothing about autocad. Secondly – buy a new laptop. The Aspire 5003 wlmi is underpowered for AutoCad. I’m not even sure it meets the minimum requirements given that 64MB of the RAM is used up for graphics.
Oh wish i found this first, almost identicle story, upgraded my home pc and thought put vista premium on my 5003 wlmi. big mistake.
upgraded RAM to 1gig, for some daft reason i thought it could take 2, installed vista after running microsofts compatibility wizard which said it was fine. Acers site has usless vista drivers for ‘all 5000 series’ just upgrade, but how.
Vista requests you have to reformat in NTFS and when you do you lose everything Acer, i had nothing on it i cared abouit anymore so didn’t wory.
So i now have it running vista, but no wireless, no sound, won’t accept any asdditional USB 2 storage as Readyboost, in total i think i’m just going to reset it as factory installed and sell it, iot looked so good last year on paper vs price, but it was a stupid machine, 64 bit processor but couldn’t take advantage of it.
if anyone out there got around this pleass post.
Thanks Steve i’m not going mad.
Mad Acer mad.
As nerd. said, a compilation of drivers from the other Acer models will help, I won’t be bold enough to say do the trick. I’m running Vista Home Premium 32bit with the assorted drivers as indicated where to find in this article and I have the buttons working on the top bar.
I had also done research on the usability of the laptop with the 64 bit Vista and decided against it when I decided to test Vista on this machine. I will be attempting the 64 bit edition once I have collected all the drivers I can find, but I doubt there will be that much success in the process.
I even emailed Acer about 64 bit support for the laptop with XP and they said what is on the web site is what is supported. Not much help there.
Long and short of it is to install XP 32/64 and forget running the newest up to date OS on a laptop that even says on hte label, Windows Vista Capable and no drivers have been provided in detail on the website.
I have three Acer 5003wlmi model computers from Circuit city. I am very pleased with my installation of Vista. First, I upgraded my ram to 1gb/computer. Then I installed vista. To get networking, insert the first disc that came with your computer into the dvd drive, “disc 1” should be its name. When you autorun, you will go to thin “install” button, find the app, driver, or whatever you need in the drop menu to the right of the window. THE AUDIO DRIVER IS FOR WINXP ONLY. So go to the url at the bottom of this post to get the Vista driver.
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=23&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false
Glad to help,
Trent (computer prodigy)
I also have a 5003. I am running Vista Ultimate with 512MB or RAM. Came across this site because I was searching to see how much RAM was supported (I wanted to go with 2GB, but I guess I have to stick to 1GB 🙁 ). My wireless, audio, and video drivers work fine….
I got the same system and istalled windows vista ultimate 64bit. I upgraded the RAM to 2gb and it really runs great. The only thing is, i cannot find a 64 bit Video Driver for sis graphic card. I searched everywhere. Acer really sucks on 64bit support and yet they sell laptops with 64 bit processor
Does anyone know if there are different incarnations of the 5003wlmi? I bought my dad one, it has 60GB hdd, says 256MB Ram (doubled – sellers offering double RAM upgrade) with the Turion 64 processor, it had a default OS of Vista Ultimate on, but at the time there were no drivers at all, so I formatted and put XP back on, which was a shame sine it seemed to work quite quickly, despite the low RAM. I was considering trying it again since drivers seem to be available.
i have a acer aspire 5000 and it works with with windows 7 with 1 gb of ram (i had to upgrade from 512 to 1gb :)). the screen sometimes flicks but thats becouse its using the microsoft driver i cant use my graphics driver from acer to upgrade the driver becouse im running a 64bit os of windows 7. besides that ive got areo to work 2 with modificatios of windows 7 and i modified bios to use 128 mb of my ram to use as onboard memory yay just thought i would let u know that windows 7 was out 🙂
windows can be a pain some of the info here helps out nice site keep up the good work. reformat windows xp
I’ve got the same system. It did the job for a while but was never 100% satisfied. I hated the partitioned drive which it appears the set up insists on having. Over the 4 years I’ve had this computer I’ve had tons of problems with it overheating. Overall, since this is the second Acer I’ve owned and had problems with both of them I’ll NEVER own another Acer… they just plain suck…