Dec 1st, 2006
My Acer Aspire 1693wlmi EU warranty problems
In July 2005 I finally decided to buy a laptop. I already had an external Firewire 410 M-Audio interface ( which I purchased in January from Arizona over Ebay hassle free) and was eager to start using it as a mobile DAW (digital audio workstation). After many hours reading reviews, forums, comparing prices (I recommend this site) I went for an Acer Aspire 1693 which I purchased from here (Germany), a really cool online shop. In a few days I had it delivered to my door. Up till now I was very pleased with my laptop, it was fast, decently built and we made quite a few songs on it.
Two months ago it started to deliver $mft errors, a month ago the first BSOD appeared with corruptions of config/system32 (manually restored registry, did also reinstalls…) and finaly I could not even boot it because it got stuck with a
“PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: exiting broadcom pxe rom Operating system not found” message. F**k. Did some online search and decided to buy a new HD. My pregnant Špelca was in Bremen so she got me a 120 GB WD Scorpio drive. I swapped the drives, but it turned out that it was not the HD. Additionally I connected the original HD on an USB interface and it was OK. I did of course do an immediate backup (I do it regularly anyway).
Time to contact Europe Acer support. They replied a week later, a probable motherboard failure, recommending sending the laptop for warranty repair. OK. One problem – I’m from Slovenia. Ooops, they replied, you only have 1 year warranty in that case. Please note – if I bought the NB in Slovenia I would have a 2 year warranty, also if I bougt it from Germany and had it shipped to a German address. Only because I bought it in a German online store and had it shipped to Slovenia I lost 1 year of warranty service. Hmmm… I made many phone calls to Acer Europe and Germany (it takes ages to get in and they charge minutes extra, their answers were inconsistent, once one guy who just would not understand my problem dropped the line!) and after contacting hoh.de and a letter in a pretty determined tone
Sehr geehrte Ms. Riedel,danke fuer die Antwort. Ich habe heute mit der Reparatur-Abteilung geschprochen (tel. 01805 00 55 20 +2). Da wurde mir wieder gesagt dass ich aber die lokale Acer Support Firma kontaktieren soll. Auch die Garantiedauer wurde mir verkurzt! Wem soll ich jetzt glauben?
Der problematischer Punkt bei der Gelegenheit ist anscheinend die Garantiedauer wenn ich das Notebook bei einer Deutschen firma (hoh.de) gekauft und es nach Slowenien (nicht “slovania”) bestellt habe. Heute wurde mir gesagt dass ich deswegen (Lieferadresse Slowenien) nur 1 Jahr Garantie hatte.
Slowenien ist in der EU und die Acer Computer die in Slowenien (online und in der Shops) gekauft werden haben auch 2 Jahre Garantie. Wuerde ich das Notebook in Deutschland kaufen und dann nach Slowenien umziehen haette ich auch keine Probleme wegen der Garantiedauer wenn ich das Notebook zur Reparatur zurrueck nach Deutschland schickte. Wuerde ich das Notebook in Slowenien kaufen dann koennte ich ebenfalls das Komputer problemlos ins lokale Service schicken. Ich verstehe aber nicht warum ich in meinem Fall nur 1 Jahr Garantie haben sollte. Wegen der inkonsistenten Behandlung des Problems habe ich schon meinen Rechtsberater kontaktiert und die EU Regulativen sind da ganz klar. Auserdem habe ich auf mehreren Komputer-Foren mein Problem mit Acer Aspire Notebook und ihrem Acer Support Team mitgeteilt. Ich bitte sie um eine ganz klare und konsistente Antwort. Andernfalls werde ich mich direkt an Ihren Vorgesetzten wenden.
Danke.
they pretty quickly came up with this: I only have the right to 2 year warranty service if I send the NB to Germany and then they send it to some address in Germany but not back to Slovenia. That’s an additional 6000 SIT (25€) shipping cost for me but I can live with that if I get the NB repaired back (thanks Boro for arranging the German shipping address). So despite all the EU common market and service hype things aren’t that clear and simple. Be careful!
I’ll keep you posted on my NB’s whereabouts 
Next time buy $ony
…or $amsung!
Bad thing happened to ur laptop, plus its a downer for u, having your new toy broken… hmm, u should get the HP Compaq (nw8240 is cool)+ RME fireface audio card, i guess u wouldnt have problems with it…thou, this one is also good, what kind of music u make? this card u have is good for electronic music,overdubbing and playback, but it only has 2 x line in so, for more complex working u need a optical i/o and digital mixer (at least 8 ch + adat).But, if that is what u need, then its ok. if u work also with video, not just audio, maybe pro tools is really the smoothest solution(u know mbox?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Tools
also i think for music, mac is better (but of course, also more expensive) solution. i mean, for audio daw u neead a computer, that can be the best optimized, not just the best price… (there is a folks saying… malo para, malo muzike;)that would hmm mean; less money, less music. thou after all u get to pay more for less, and u have other related problems comming out of these problems… i say to myself, im not so rich to afford cheap stuff. so when it comes to my music i look for the best things/components/instruments/people… (and then i dont eat for a week, as all my money goes into that, lol:)
well, i hope ull get ur comp working, and more importantly, u ll get ur music going!!!
hav-a-nice-time
m
ps
in old comps, problems audio daws could have was incompatibility of graphic user interface (gui) and audio software due to different manufacturers of audio software and graphic card, so they didnt work in sync in some configuration…matrox grafic card was a good solution then…
Hi, I have with my Acer Aspire 1410 the same problems that you have told: one month ago it started to shutdown suddenly and deliver errors and corruptions of files, I have tried restoring ghost backups and cleaning the internal fan, but the problem returns after several days. I’m bored of the message : “PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: exiting broadcom pxe rom Operating system not found” I shut down the laptop, and after waiting several hours it works again until the next warning message and shutdown. I sent a year ago the laptop to replace the dvd writer and now it has broken the screen (a part of my screen is yellow
) and i’m thinking again in sending the laptop to the warranty service, and wait for a long time the return. I have a problem with the warranty period too, in the laptop papers it appear that the warranty is 1 year, but in my country (Spain) the warranty is 2 years by law. I’m going to buy an HP or Mac and wait for a long time to use newly my Acer.
Please, do you know exactly what was the problem that reports: “PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: exiting broadcom pxe rom Operating system not found”, is the hard drive, the bios… if you know please tell me what it is, to try to solve it for my own.
CONCLUSION: Acer NEVER AGAIN
“The felurecode shows an hardwaredefect on the mainboard into the area network and IDE. So the notebook must repair into the repaircenter.”
Alvaro, this is the explanation of our failure code at Euro_HelpATacer-euro.com (their English is cool, eh?) .I’m pretty sure it is the hard drive controller or something else on the MB. Hope you get it sorted out. Mine has been repaired and I’m waiting for it to be picked up in Germany. I only hope they haven’t simply just put a new HD in it. I’ll keep you posted.
This information truly helped me, I’m sharing having a few friends.