New Aldi Laptop Keyboard problem

baz^

Has anyone got the new Aldi laptop (can't find a link, released a couple of weeks ago)? I got one on order, tried it last night, but each time I turned it on, after about 15/20mins the keyboard and touch pad froze, although the computer hadn't crashed, there were still processes going on (games continuing without control etc), but no interface. Has anyone else had the same problem?

I'm going to bring it back tomorrow, but from what I've read about their after-sales service, I'm not too hopeful.

Please no flames about "well that's what you get for buying a laptop from aldi", the specs are sweet, and it was only €1399.

baz^

found the link

Wolverine_1999

I heard on German and Australian forums that a bios upgrade was needed to stop these crashes which is available at the medion website.

Go to http://www.medion.co.uk/ and to "drivers & updates". You can then either enter your laptop serial number or the model number (MD96500), and find all the updates. The bios update comes up firstly.

Be very carefuly when upgrading the bios yourself and follow the on screen instructions EXACTLY as it says. If you mess it up, I don't think Medion will help you out!

This fixes the touchpad problems, and also the DVB-T card problems which have been occuring. We can't us DVB-T in Ireland anyway, so that is irrelevent.

baz^

thanks Wolverine, I'd be _very_ wary of updating the bios myself, but I'll probably give it a try, cheers.

baz^

ok, I flashed the bios, and it seemed to work for about 2 and a half hours, but then, same problem. It seems to be kind of random, I was doing different things with it each time, and I didn't jar it or anything. Bah.

Creamy Goodness

does happen only in games??


i know a guy in college got this laptop aswell and was having the same problem only in games though, he said he fixed it by disabling the touch pad when playing games.

you could give that a shot

baz^

no, happened once when I was playing UT2004, then just on the net, then running Hamachi, and also just when idle. And it's the whole keyboard, multimedia keys and touchpad that give up, the only thing that works is the biometric fingerprint scanner and an external mouse.

baz^

meh, tis rightly borked. I brought it back and got me money back and ordered this instead

Thanks for the help guys.

awhir

sweat laptop mean.

antoinolachtnai

I had this problem.

You have to update the mousepad drivers. The problem then goes away.

The bios upgrade is supposed to fix a different problem from what I understand (problems with the tuner).

baz^

bah, anyone I talked to in Aldi/medion said they hadn't heard of this problem. Ah well, it's gone now anyway.

As a matter of interest, do you know why it was happenin? And why only certain computers?

antoinolachtnai

I think there was just a bug in the driver that was somehow holding up a subsystem. There are always problems with these drivers at the beginning.

I am pretty disappointed that Medion support said they hadn't heard of this. It's all over the discussion groups in Australia and Medion released the new version of the driver just to sort it out.

I think it happened on all the 96500's. It's just that you often had to run the computer for a few hours, fairly intensively before it happened. I'm sure it depends what programs you are running. It only happened to me twice, I think.

Ah well, there'll be a bunch of reconditioned 96500's coming on the market soon, and they'll be pretty good value! I think it's really a great laptop, very happy with it.

baz^

nope, unfortunately "gone" meant I had already brought it back :rolleyes:

Tis indeed a very nice laptop for the money, and would have been so handy to keep it, but I'm gonna order a different one anyway.

antoinolachtnai

Sorry about that, i edited my contribution after you posted a reply, which is why the thread might not quite read coherently.

baz^

actually, scratch that, here's the one I'm getting

antoinolachtnai

I wouldn't go for that one myself ... don't like the look of the athlon processor. it's basically a desktop processor. I know everyone has a prejudice against some brand or other of laptop. Sorry, but mine is Gateway! When they screwed over their customers in Ireland (and Singapore, where I was at the time) I was pretty annoyed.

Best of luck with it!

a.

baz^

yeah, I have my reservations about them too, but my bro picked it out (he's a computer engineer) so I'll respect his judgement! Thanks for the opinion anyway though.