Fixing an Acer Aspire ZA3 Netbook with Cracked Screen (In Burnaby)

This Acer Aspire 11.6" netbook came in on 27July2013. It had a cracked screen. The owner had been looking for screen in reasonable price but did not find one.

Next to motherboard, screen is the most expensive part. I tried eBay and Amazon. The deal in Amazon is good but shipping is nearly double. I finally ended up to order screen which is shipped from North Vancouver. It is still expensive. The screen arrived in 2 days. It was easy to replace.

The netbook has a 160 GB hard drive and has the factory recovery inside. I tried to create a set of recovery DVDs from the eRecovery program. However, it got stuck in the first step. I restored the netbook to factory image and tried again to create the recovery DVDs. This time, the recovery DVDs were generated successfully.

I have a set of Windows 7 Starter recovery DVDs from a newly Acer netbook that is used by my daughter. I was interested to test if they work on this older netbook. The installation was successfully. However, Windows 7 put in a default video driver which does not provide the high resolution as in its Windows XP version. Also, it asked for Windows activation key. I keyed in the product code from the COA of my other Acer netbook but the activation failed. It means that if my netbook is dead, I could not re-use its Windows 7 Starter version in another older netbook. The OS will be gone together with the hardware.

After testing Windows 7 Starter, I ran the XP recovery DVDs to restore the netbook back to it legitimate Windows XP version. Restore completed successfully and did not ask for Windows XP activation. I tested wireless connection, ran several YouTube videos to test the sound and display. All are working fine. I then tested the Webcam to ensure the screen replacement did not disabled the Webcam. I checked the bottom cover. A front rubber leg was missing. A cut two legs from a wide rubber band to replace both.

The 6 cell battery at 100% shows 4.48 hr. When I started running video for a minutes, it re-calculated the dropped to 4 hr. I cleaned up the netbook by rubbing alcohol. Although it is ready to serve again. However, finding a user at cost will be difficult. That is the reason why the owner did not replace the screen.

On 25July2013, it was picked up by a student who traded in a bigger laptop which had keying problem.