Hi I have a Acer Vista Laptop 80gb & when veiwed in my computer shows up as TWO 40gb hd’s.
After removing the hd i noticed it is one singe 80gb hd so i cannot figure out why it is split as if ther are two hds.
The problem is that one 40gb is full & bursting & ive sread as much as possible on to the other data 40gb hd.
Ideally i would rather it work as one singe 80gb hd leaving me pleanty of space to fill till I fix my xp deasktop.
Ive searched the settings & for the life of me can see why one 80gb hd shows up as two 40gb hd’s so now Im resorting to asking for help something I rarley need as im usually dishing out advise to freinds.
If no one has any ideas why then ill have to buy a bigger hd.
How much memory is on it? Is it the standard 512 meg? That’s your problem. Vista uses all that on its own. I bet it runs tortoise slow too(?). Up it to 2 gig of memory and you’ll be sorted and it’ll run quite a bit faster too.
Rob K:
How much memory is on it? Is it the standard 512 meg? That’s your problem. Vista uses all that on its own.
That’s really quite scary, my laptop has Win2k and “only” has 256meg and it runs perfectly well. What does Vista do to justify such a ludicrous memory requirement? Good old Microsoft bloat.
robntl:
Ive searched the settings & for the life of me can see why one 80gb hd shows up as two 40gb hd’s so now Im resorting to asking for help something I rarley need as im usually dishing out advise to freinds.
The most likely reason I can think of is that it was partitioned into two 40Gb partitions when it was first installed. It is possible that the reason for that is that whatever OS that was first installed on it couldn’t cope with partitions as big as 80Gb. You might be able to fix it by reinstalling Windows and changing the partitions when you do so. This will of course result in you losing all the data on the machine so be sure to back up anything important first.
Rob K:
How much memory is on it? Is it the standard 512 meg? That’s your problem. Vista uses all that on its own.
That’s really quite scary, my laptop has Win2k and “only” has 256meg and it runs perfectly well. What does Vista do to justify such a ludicrous memory requirement? Good old Microsoft bloat.
Paul
That is because Win2k uses no beans as it designed for business use and therefore didn’t come with the oodles of unnecessary toys that the Joe Punter ones come with.
As a tech nerd yourself (supposedly) I’m gob-smacked to see that you are, in effect, saying that Vista uses little memory. It is a well known fact (read any PC forums) that Vista scoffs memory like there’s no tomorrow and you need at least 2 gig for it to even think about running smoothly.
Rob K:
As a tech nerd yourself (supposedly) I’m gob-smacked to see that you are, in effect, saying that Vista uses little memory. It is a well known fact (read any PC forums) that Vista scoffs memory like there’s no tomorrow and you need at least 2 gig for it to even think about running smoothly.
I’m saying nothing of the sort, I’ve never used Vista and I don’t frequent any PC forums so I was expressing genuine surprise at quite how greedy it is. If you need that much RAM to run it it’s going to be quite some time before I even consider it I suspect.
It’s quite telling of the advances in technology that I thought my first PC had a lot when it had 32Mb of RAM and now you need 2048Mb to be able to run the latest OS.
Rob K:
As a tech nerd yourself (supposedly) I’m gob-smacked to see that you are, in effect, saying that Vista uses little memory. It is a well known fact (read any PC forums) that Vista scoffs memory like there’s no tomorrow and you need at least 2 gig for it to even think about running smoothly.
I’m saying nothing of the sort, I’ve never used Vista and I don’t frequent any PC forums so I was expressing genuine surprise at quite how greedy it is. If you need that much RAM to run it it’s going to be quite some time before I even consider it I suspect.
It’s quite telling of the advances in technology that I thought my first PC had a lot when it had 32Mb of RAM and now you need 2048Mb to be able to run the latest OS.
Paul
We actually agree on something. Yes, you’re right, the old school stuff’s RAM requirements are a drop in the ocean compared to today’s OSs.
Personally I wouldn’t have Vista given. Unfortunately, trying to find a new lappy with XP on it now is like trying to find rocking horse [zb].
Rob K:
As a tech nerd yourself (supposedly) I’m gob-smacked to see that you are, in effect, saying that Vista uses little memory. It is a well known fact (read any PC forums) that Vista scoffs memory like there’s no tomorrow and you need at least 2 gig for it to even think about running smoothly.
I’m saying nothing of the sort, I’ve never used Vista and I don’t frequent any PC forums so I was expressing genuine surprise at quite how greedy it is. If you need that much RAM to run it it’s going to be quite some time before I even consider it I suspect.
It’s quite telling of the advances in technology that I thought my first PC had a lot when it had 32Mb of RAM and now you need 2048Mb to be able to run the latest OS.
Paul
We actually agree on something. Yes, you’re right, the old school stuff’s RAM requirements are a drop in the ocean compared to today’s OSs.
Personally I wouldn’t have Vista given. Unfortunately, trying to find a new lappy with XP on it now is like trying to find rocking horse [zb].
if you can put up with second hand you can still find a decent lappy with xp pro or home on fleabay failing that i think there is a regular computer fair in bradford (not sure where though )
Heres an alternative prodiding microsoft still do it, if youre like me an got an XP desktop you can purchase a extension to the serial number (2nd serial number) & run your xp disk on the lappy with the new serial.
I am considering doing exactly that but the downside is that you will not be privvy to any vista only extras’ that ms put out not that ive seen anything so far to warrent keeping my lappy on vista…
Rob K:
[. Unfortunately, trying to find a new lappy with XP on it now is like trying to find rocking horse [zb].
misco were selling “rocking horse droppings” in december
Funny you should mention it actually Denis. Just received a flyer through from them of which included an AMD HP 6715 with XP on it for a very good price.
By default all Acer recovery Cds, will create 2 equal size partions on a hard disk. Hence why your 80Gb drive shows at 2X40Gb partitions. If you use the Recovery disks it will rebuild the laptop as it left the factory. The only way to change your partition sizes would be to re-install Vista from a Vista CD, then during the install you can set the sizes of partitions. But…there’s always a but, the Vista licence key on ypur laptop will not work as it’s unique to the Acer install of Vista.
As for memory, if you plug a 2Gb USB flash drive (or any size for that matter) in to a Vista machine, you can use any free space on it as additional memory.
Colingl:
As for memory, if you plug a 2Gb USB flash drive (or any size for that matter) in to a Vista machine, you can use any free space on it as additional memory.
That’s quite clever but won’t it knacker up the flash up quite quickly? I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that most flash will only do a few hundred thousand writes before it stops working and whilst that’ll obviously last effectively forever in a digital camera or mp3 player I would suspect used as main memory that it would get to that many fairly quickly.
I have a lappy running vista, which came with 512mb, and it ran perfectly fine. Wasn’t slow at all.
If you plan to upgrade the memory, be aware that different machines have a memory ceiling on them. Therefore it may only be possible to increase to 1gb of RAM, depending on the model of laptop you have.
Also worth a mention is that a vista 32bit system will only recognise between 3 and 3.5gb ram, so putting 4gb in there would be a waste of money.
However, a vista 64bit system will recognise the higher ram.
Take a look at www.crucial.com to determine how much memory your motherboard will support, and how any slots you have available.
We actually agree on something. Yes, you’re right, the old school stuff’s RAM requirements are a drop in the ocean compared to today’s OSs. 
