The Acer Revo 3700 thread

[J T]

It was getting tho the windows splash screen and then BSODing, I had a quick look through the BIOS settings and it all looked to be OK.

I've since reinstalled from scratch and spent an age waiting for updates - around 73, then a service pack, then some more.....

While windows 7 feels pretty snappy in operation on the Revo, the updating takes a painfully long time. Also a minor gripe, but quite often progress bars don't appear to move along much for ages, and then the 'complete' box pops up. It's a psychological thing, but not seeing a visual indicator tick up is REALLY irritating.

Now that all the updates are done and all seems good I'd like to make an HDD image so that I can easily get back to this point (I imagine I'll be doing a fair bit of tinkering, which brings the risk of a boo-boo). Anyone care to recommend some good, easy to use, free disk image&restore software?

I'm very pleased with the actual unit, it's very small, quite attractively designed (apart from the STUPID front optical port), and it's super quiet (a sky box or blue ray player is noisier in operation, and of course it's nothing compared to the noisy 360). Seems to run quite cool, so it should be OK in one of the little cubby bits under the telly.

[Harrison]

Great to see you got it working in the end. You mentioned it BSOD at the splash screen, and this is the exact behaviour that would occur if the SATA mode had changed, because it is at that point that Windows is loading the main SATA drivers, finding the drive has been formatted with the SATA port in the wrong mode and gives up.

Anyway, you got it working so that is the main thing.

One useful tip for you... if you intend sharing it over a local network then when you create a share for a folder or drive in Windows 7 add a new used to the permissions of the share called "everyone". All previous versions of Windows has this user group setup as standard, but it isn't set as standard in Win 7 when sharing a location. Adding it makes it easy to access other systems across a network. Not having it leads to loads of headaches with "you don't have access to this resource" messages, or popup requests for usernames and passwords. Saves all that headache.

As for a good backup program, I don't know if any of the free ones are any good, but the commercial Acronis True Image Home 2011 is the best available at the moment. It only costs £23 so not a huge amount, but a free trial version is available to test it out.

[J T]

So after a bit of time dragging through the updates, the little Revo was all up to date and ready to go under the telly. It's a lovely, quiet little machine and sits there not drawing any attention (the blu-ray/surround sound kit has a louder fan, and the Austar (like Sky+) box has a louder hardrive). It sits nicely out of the way on top of another box in a little cubby under the telly. I think the unit itself is quite an appealing design and would look OK on the stand (it comes with a free-stand, as well as a vesa-like mount for mounting it on the back of monitors but not larger screens) but as usual the wires and bits sticking out would spoil it a little. The power brick is little, and has an L plug end for the Revo, so it can be nicely angled out of the way.

Startup is nice and quick, and the machine seems to whizz through windows quite nicely, no major hanging that I've seen. From where we sit, I had to change the display options to make the icons and text visible enough on the 42"

XBMC runs nicely, I've not tried any of the majorly fancy skins (the default, confluence, seems pretty good to me at the moment). Playback is good, no stutters that I've seen, and it's still connected up wirelessly. I'll be running a cable to it soon enough. Mostly I've put SD or below content on it, as that's how the vast majority of my downloads are. I think/feel the 360 might do a slightly better job of upscaling, although I haven't really done any proper comparisons. The little bit of HD content I did try (a watchmen mkv) seemed nice enough. I have to admit that I'm not a major resolution freak, I notice more a poor bitrate or crappy encoding.

Having a nice clear interface has made it so much better for us to watch our media. XBMC tracks what we have watched, is fairly easy to navigate, the wife can use it, she can listen to radio and our ripped music, eventually look at photo slideshows etc... This is more general to an HTPC than the revo itself, but early impresssions are that the little box is a damn fine media centre.

Gripes are very minor, the power button rocks in the opposite way to that you'd expect and has a bit of a crappy spongy feel, plus a little bit of the light spills out of the surround, and the startup beep is a bit loud. One of the front/side USB ports has a rubber plug covering that is much too tight and won't come out just by hand. I don't want to use a tool to dig it out.

Great to see you got it working in the end. You mentioned it BSOD at the splash screen, and this is the exact behaviour that would occur if the SATA mode had changed, because it is at that point that Windows is loading the main SATA drivers, finding the drive has been formatted with the SATA port in the wrong mode and gives up.

Good point. I wonder if I could have saved myself a little time there. No matter, as it's done now.

Will have to sort out the homegroup too, although things are mostly one way and are working sort of OK (the Revo can see the shared drive on my big PC, and of course most content is chucked onto the NAS first which is working fine).

I have yet to activate windows though. I'd better ('call microsoft customer support' - Ed.) soon.

[Harrison]

Don't bother with homegroups. They are a pointless home user feature M$ added to Win 7 that I can see being dropped again in a couple more OSs down the line. Instead just make sure all your PCs are in the same Workgroup and then in Windows 7 in the sharing permissions add the usergroup "everyone" to each system. That will then allow you to access everything within a shared drive or directory that is shared. Must more simple and removes loads of hassles you can have with home groups.

[kmanpilkers]

This thread just saved my life (or at least it feels that way!).

I just made the same mistake as the OP by meddling and trying to flash the BIOS for no real reason other than I can't get Wake on LAN working and it's annoying me. The exact same thing was happening to me, a BSOD and then immediate reboot after succesfully flashing the chip and starting Windows.

It turns out the solution was the SATA mode - it was set to AHCI and it should be in Native IDE. You can set this by entering BIOS with del at startup, and going to "Integrated Peripherals". This has stopped the immediate bluescreen for me anyway, so I just hope this helps someone else out.

So relieved I found this thread! Hopefully this will stop me messing in future (I doubt it). Thanks again.

Kev

[Harrison]

Glad this helped you out.

[J T]

Did you get wake on lan to work? I had a brief fiddle with it and couldn't get it to work. I'm tempted to go back to it again and have another go, as it would be useful - especially if I can get it set up with my Harmony One and an IR receiver. The iphone apps for controlling XBMC are.... OK.... but the remote would probably work better, and is almost as tech-fancy.

[duke66]

I have had my Revo 3700 for a while and have tried to upgrade to 4g ram. Mine came with 2 1g sticks installed. If I install any other rem I don't even get to the boot up beep. I have tried 2 2g sticks and 1 4g stick. Even if I only install 1 2g stick it won't boot. It is the same ram as it came with just faster. Any ideas out there?