Jeedo’s Blog

This is a guide to install, downgrade (or upgrade whatever you call it) Windows XP drivers on your Acer 4730z laptop. This is specific for the Acer 4730z-321G16Mn series shipped to the Philippines.

Before we start installing the drivers I’m assuming that you already have Windows XP installed on your laptop. In case you need help with that please read this guide on slipstreaming a SATA driver for your Acer 4730z.

Here’s the list of drivers for the Acer 4730z laptop:

SATA driver (included here for reference)
Chipset driver
Video driver
Audio driver
Modem driver
LAN (local area network) driver
Wifi driver
Intel matrix storage
Card reader driver
Touchpad driver
Web cam driver (suyin - for this particular model)
Launch Manager

You’ll also need this:

WinRAR

You’ll need to download all the drivers first. Then, unpack them to their respective folders, you can later delete the unpacked folders after installation.

Take note that if a driver install requires you to reboot, I highly suggest you do so. This lessens the errors during the installation of the other drivers. Install the drivers in the following sequence.

1. Begin by installing the chipset drivers first.
2. Then install the video driver. You’ll need this to have smooth visuals when installing the rest of the drivers.
3. Install the audio driver. Before running the audio install setup, you need to install kb888111xpsp2.exe first. You can find this in this directory under the audio install folder.

   (realtek audio folder whatever…)\MSHDQFE\Win2K_XP\us
   Note, your audio driver won’t install properly if you don’t install the kb888111xpsp2.exe file first.

4. After installing audio, Windows XP will detect a modem device on your laptop. Just cancel the prompt and proceed by installing the Modem driver.
5. Next, install the LAN driver.
6. Follow this with the WiFi driver.
7. Then, install the Intel matrix storage driver.
8. The card reader driver should follow after the matrix storage driver.
9. Then follow this with the touchpad driver and the webcam. By default, Windows XP should be able to install its own driver for the crystal eye webcam but there are instances when some applications will crash using Microsoft’s driver. In this case, you need to install the specific webcam driver for the laptop.
10. Finally install the Launch Manager. You’ll want the launch manager installed if you want to activate the e button function on the upper left portion of the laptop. Also, you won’t be able to see some indicators (like how loud the volume is) if you don’t install the launch manager.

Things to note. The Acer 4730z’s webcam and wifi may vary from model to model so if the driver you installed on your laptop doesn’t work then its definitely not the right one. In this case, you’ll want to look up these links for additional drivers:

Acer Europe driver link
Acer Thailand driver link

That pretty much sums it up. Wishing you luck on your Windows XP installation. In any case you have questions just leave a comment and I’ll try my best to get back to you soon as I can. ^_^

This article will show you how to slipstream a SATA driver for the Acer 4730z on Windows XP. This is required if you want to install Windows XP on your Acer 4730z with SATA enabled.

Before we start you’ll be needing the following:

Blank CD or DVD
CD or DVD writer
Windows XP SP2 (licensed of course)
nLite
Acer 4730z SATA driver

Why slipstream? Well, the very basic reason is that without the SATA driver loaded during install for your Acer 4730z, the Windows XP installer won’t be able to “see” your hard disk. Can’t see hard disk, can’t install OS. Not much anything to argue about not unless you are too lazy to slipstream and want to take the easier route to install XP on your Acer 4730z laptop.

Before anything else make sure you’ve downloaded and installed the latest version of nLite (nLite download mirror). Which is version 1.4.9.1 as of this writing. nLite makes it easier to slipstream drivers on Windows XP. So here we go:

1. Insert your Windows XP installer CD on your CD-ROM drive.

2. Fire up nLite and follow the prompts. First you’ll be asked for the location of your installer, for this sample just click on drive E and nLite will automatically look for your installer files. Then, when nLite’s done searching, it will prompt for the location of your “writable” install directory. I placed mine in this directory. You can arbitrarily choose wherever you want to place it.

3. On the next prompt you’ll see the following dialogue window, just click on the Drivers button and the Bootable ISO. That’s all we need for now.

4. When you are done unzip the compressed SATA driver file for Acer 4730z and look for the following files, iaAHCI.inf and iaStor.inf.

5. On the next dialogue window make sure you choose Textmode driver and select the following drivers (press ctrl at the same time left clicking on the correct driver). We just actually need the ICHM9M driver but I included the ICHM7M and ICHM8M drivers anyway in case I use this on other Acer laptops that require those drivers.

6. Then you’ll be prompted if you want to process the installer directory. Just click yes and wait for the integration to finish.

7. On this part, you need to insert your blank CD/DVD and once ready click on the Burn button to initiate cd writing. Once burning is done, just click on the next button.

8. Congratulations, you now have a Windows XP installer with a slipstreamed SATA driver for the Acer 4730z.

You may now use the cd to install a clean copy of Windows XP on your Acer 4730z laptop. Hope this helped a few people out there. Up next, I’ll show you how to successfully install all the drivers for the Acer 4730z laptop for Windows XP. ^_^

This is more of a note for myself in case my Firefox browser gets completely screwed up and I lose all my favorite add-ons. The following are Firefox add-ons I frequently use on my computer.

Bookmark Duplicate Detector. Helps you find, move and remove duplicate bookmarks. It also gives you a notice when you add a bookmark that’s already bookmarked.

DownloadHelper. Download videos and images from many sites. Useful for downloading videos from youtube.

Evernote Web Clipper. One of my best note keeping tools. Provides a button and context menus to easily add a selection or an entire page to Evernote.

Favicon Picker. Allows you to replace bookmark icons using the properties dialog.

FireGestures. Executes various commands on your browser (like closing your current window) with mouse
gestures. Very cool when you are a mouse person.

FoxClocks. Displays local times around the world in the statusbar/toolbar. Supports virtually all time zones. Very helpful when you work with different people in different time zones.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. Synchronizes your bookmarks across machines. Very nifty if you switch between two or more computers and use a browser extensively.

LogMeIn Remote Access Plugin. If you haven’t tried this service yet and you keep using the windows Remote Desktop, I suggest you try it and see the difference.

ScribeFire. A full feature blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. Matter of fact, all of the posts here are courtesy of ScribeFire.

SearchStatus. Display the Google PageRank and Alexa ranking with search-related tools. Pretty accurate most of the time.

SeoQuake. Quick view of site parameters in the search engine result page. Very helpful for SEO and wannabes like me.

Smart Bookmarks Bar. Hides bookmark’s names in the bookmarks bar. Keeps your bookmark toolbar neat and clean.

Tamper Data. View and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers etc. Track and time http requests, very handy for debugging web sites.

Web Developer. Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools. Extremely helpful for web developers and designers.

I know there are plenty more great add-ons out there that I should have in my arsenal, but I’m a minimalist and I only install what I need and use. This is just my personal preference working as a project manager and developer. I’m using the latest Firefox version 3 and so far with these add-ons, I never had any crashes or freezes yet. Or then again, I guess I’m just lucky. ^_^

Do you have very important documents that are definitely for your eyes only? Financial statements, private legal documents or porn (pardon the pun) perhaps that you don’t want your wife to see? If you have files that should not be accessible by the public domain you can encrypt the file and hide it from prying eyes with TrueCrypt.

Why TrueCrypt? I chose TrueCrypt for the following reasons:

• First off its open source, so it means its free and its supported by a large and active community of developers.
• It provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case you are forced to reveal your password.
• Can encrypt an entire partition or storage device such as a USB flash drive or hard drive.
• Can encrypt a partition where Windows is installed (pre boot authentication).
• Allows creation of virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a disk which makes it very portable.

I won’t delve into too much details on the other features/uses of TrueCrypt but let me just show you how I use it to protect (encrypt) my sensitive data and then backup my data to another third party backup provider like Adrive.

First off I’ll only install TrueCrypt on traveler mode. This means during install I choose the Extract radio button instead of the Install option.

Then once I’ve extracted all the required files, run the TrueCrypt executable. What you want to do is to create an encrypted volume. Click on the Create Volume button and choose the Create a file container option.

Then on the next window just choose the Standard TrueCrypt volume radio button. After that, you will be required to create a file (file name) that will serve as your volume container. I suggest choosing a file name without any extension to make it look like an orphaned file.

After creating the file you’ll be presented with different options for encryption algorithms, you can use the default options or change it to the other possible algorithms.

The next option then will be to indicate the maximum capacity of your volume. I chose mine to be 50 Megabytes in size because I only intend to place important documents there and not my entire archive, plus I want it to be very portable and relatively fast to throw over http.

Then on the next window you will be prompted for your password. For your security, choose a password that’s at least over 20 characters long using a combination of numbers and letters. Just leave the two checkboxes at the bottom unchecked (Use keyfiles, Display password).

On the next dialogue box (Volume Format) choose NTFS, default cluster and make sure that the Dynamic checkbox is unchecked for security reasons. Dynamic drives are easier to exploit than fixed size volumes. Finally click on the Format button and when TrueCrypt is done you should see this message window.

To start using your encrypted file, run the TrueCrypt executable again then select the file (Select File button) that you’ve just created. Choose a drive letter on the dialogue window then, click on the mount button and you will be prompted for a password. Type in the password for the file and click on the Mount button. You should be able to see your mounted volume on the TrueCypt window.

Of course then you should be able to see your drive on Windows Explorer as well. My encrypted drive for this case is Drive Y.

You can start throwing in all of your documents that you need to secure and encrypt. Then, when you are done, right click on the TrueCrypt icon on the taskbar, dismount the drive and close TrueCrypt. Your files are now safe and sound. Oh, just a note, don’t you ever forget your password or you will never retrieve your files again. For the backup to a third party service part, I’ll have to write it some other time since this post has been long enough. ^_^

I’m pretty sure you’ve encountered this error one way or another:

This is usually caused when you have a file that’s still open on the removable storage device. If you keep around 20 windows or more at any time like me, this can be a hassle. You see, I have a habit of just hibernating my PC instead of shutting it down to keep whatever document that’s open, well… still open for the next boot. That way, I can easily continue working on whatever pending document I had the other day.

Fortunately, I came across unlocker, a very nifty tool by Cedrick ‘Nitch’ Collomb (props to the author). Its totally free but if you’d like to donate via PayPal then please feel free to do so. What I really like about unlocker is its simplicity.

To fix the problem, install unlocker and when the warning pops-out, just right click on the usb drive that you wish to safely remove.

Then click on the Unlocker wand and voila, you should see what’s causing the problem.

Turned out I forgot to close my media player loaded with an mp3 file on the removable drive. You can then opt to kill the process from unlocker or just close the offending application. ^_^

I’ve always been annoyed with the less than desirable space available on my Firefox browser when I access Google Calendar and netvibes. So when I discovered Google Chrome with its minimalistic features, it was more than welcome to sit on my desktop.

I used to have a cramped month view with google calendar on my firefox browser. With google chrome’s application shortcut, I get more space and on top of that I get a short cut icon as well sitting on my desktop for faster access.

A side note, this is a good example of the blurring of lines between desktop and web applications. To create your own handy app on your desktop, open google chrome and access your favorite web app that you frequently use (ex: netvibes.com, calendar.google.com).

Then, on the upper right side of google chrome, click on the document icon and click on the Create application shortcuts… on the drop down. Make sure you check on the Desktop checkbox before you proceed to click the OK button. When you are done you should have a new shortcut icon on your desktop that will automatically open up a new Chrome app window when clicked.

This feature is specially nifty if you have plenty of web based applications that you use on a daily basis. Just don’t get too carried away with creating an app shortcut for virtually all of your web applications. After all, too much of a good thing is still bad. ^_^

Hey there,

Thanks for dropping by. I created this blog because I want to give something back to the world wide web. Through the internet, I learned so much from people who were very generous to share their expertise and knowledge, now its my turn. This is my way of saying thank you to those who shared freely, specially to Sir Tim Berners-Lee. ^_^

Sincerely,

Jeedo