Have I worn my laptop out or do I need to fix Vista?

Hi all,

I've had an Acer Aspire 5100 in my posession since April when I acquired it
practically brand new. At the time this thing was my replacement till I got
another desktop, which has not happened..so I've been using this thing A
LOT.

I know once in a while the system icons will disappear...the ones for
volume, network, battery, etc...and that generally a reboot will fix it,
however, over the last week or so and numerous reboots they have not
reappeared. I cannot select them from taskbar properties because they are
greyed out. As I mentioned, several reboots haven't helped, so I doubt
another one will.

The other issue I've got, and I had this in XP on my last system..before it
blew up; is that my DVD-RW drive doesn't appear as a device after reboot..I
have to go into Device Manager and scan for new hardware, and THEN it pops
up.

I can't see where any of this would be connected to worn out hardware,
except for maybe the DVD-RW drive...but it doesn't ACT worn out...it still
works and burns discs just as well as it did from day 1.

I really don't want to have to reinstall Vista...becuase I kind of thought I
wouldn't have to..that maybe I had done enough keeping up with updates and
the garbage to prevent these problems.

Please don't reccommend System Restore. I find that to be a resource hog and
more of a problem and disabled it the minute I started using this laptop.

Re: Attached

See the following thread for a similar problem/solution to the system icons
problem.

http://tinyurl.com/6mpczw

dave

"Jay Moore" <> wrote in message
news:8888154C-DB41-403D-B495-...
> Hi all,
>
> I've had an Acer Aspire 5100 in my posession since April when I acquired
> it practically brand new. At the time this thing was my replacement till I
> got another desktop, which has not happened..so I've been using this thing
> A LOT.
>
> I know once in a while the system icons will disappear...the ones for
> volume, network, battery, etc...and that generally a reboot will fix it,
> however, over the last week or so and numerous reboots they have not
> reappeared. I cannot select them from taskbar properties because they are
> greyed out. As I mentioned, several reboots haven't helped, so I doubt
> another one will.
>
> The other issue I've got, and I had this in XP on my last system..before
> it blew up; is that my DVD-RW drive doesn't appear as a device after
> reboot..I have to go into Device Manager and scan for new hardware, and
> THEN it pops up.
>
> I can't see where any of this would be connected to worn out hardware,
> except for maybe the DVD-RW drive...but it doesn't ACT worn out...it still
> works and burns discs just as well as it did from day 1.
>
> I really don't want to have to reinstall Vista...becuase I kind of thought
> I wouldn't have to..that maybe I had done enough keeping up with updates
> and the garbage to prevent these problems.
>
> Please don't reccommend System Restore. I find that to be a resource hog
> and more of a problem and disabled it the minute I started using this
> laptop.