Acer Aspire 5050

have you tried changing your bios settings to boot to your cd rom? you can change your boot option by pressing F2 during boot up.
if you're done with this, it will automatically boot to your cd rom and instantly will install the windows operating.
if this is your first formatting experience you can follow this step by step tutorial of windows XP installation. How To Install Windows XP

finally,...good luck!

As stated it can be replaced. Might be the pits in finding the replacement fan, though.

Let's take a look at an Acer Aspire 5520 series laptop, as an example,

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/take-apart-acer-aspire-5520-laptop/

Scroll down until you come to the third photo.

Getting to the Cooling Fan in the Acer Aspire 5050 series Notebook PC's, requires a lot more disassembly, however.

The Acer Aspire 5050-3242 Notebook PC, in the category heading, is part of the Acer Aspire 5050 series of Notebook PC's.

This is the Service Manual for the Acer Aspire 5050 series of Notebook PC's,

http://www.tim.id.au/blog/tims-laptop-service-manuals/#toc-acer

Go to the second Aspire heading.
The one that begins with Aspire 1200.

Now go down to the 5th line, and scroll across to > 5050.
Left-click on 5050.

This is a PDF file.
The computer you are using now has Adobe Reader on it, which uses PDF files.

[ Although I would recommend upgrading to Adobe Reader 9, if it isn't on your computer ]

After you click on the file > 5050, you won't see anything happening for up to 30 seconds.

Most of the time the first page pops up within 10 seconds, and it requires additional time to fully download the file.

Suggest you let the file download all the way, before looking through it.
Watch the Download Progress bar.

You can save this file to your computer.
This way you can burn a copy to CD for safekeeping, and easy access anytime you wish.

You can also delete from your computer then, to save Harddrive space.
If you do not know how, and wish to, simply post in a Comment.

For further questions on this please post in a Comment.

Regards,
joecoolvette

If the hard drive tested out ok (?) then I would burn a copy of memtest (free just google it) boot from it and test the memory. I would suggest though that the issue is the hard drive or possibly motherboard

If your computer has been working and when you start it you get the message that there is no hard drive (no boot device), then your hard drive has gone bad.
If you have gone into the bios and don't see either a hard drive or a CD or DVD, then most probably you are looking at a motherboard problem. It is not very common for the hard drive and CD/DVD to go bad at once.

Yes, it's not the hard drive.

More than likely it's your motherboard.

There's not much you can do besides trying to boot the computer without the battery, and removing and reinstalling the memory.

Hopefully you'll get lucky!

Hey,

if you never get to the windows screen, then the computer is unable to start up and automatically restarts.

to fix this issue you need a windows installation cd or a the recovery media that came with the computer when purchased.

if you don't have either I suggest you take the computer to a professional who owns the cds and he or she can fix it for you.


Let me know if you need anything else.


Thanks,
Ekse

HAVE YOU CHECKED DEVICES
CLEAN THE MOUSEPAD
ARE YOU SAYING YOUR SYSTEM WON'T RESTART
CHECK MOUSE SETTINGS IN CONTROL PANEL
LET ME KNOW IF IT HELPS

that maybe the only problem. lets hope so.

do you mean reload the operating system ?
if yes and if you didn't delete the recovery partition in your harddrive, you can press alt+f10 during boot, it will guide you to the reload operating system.

Your problem could be windows vista isnot installed properly
i assume in the beginning, your laptop come with windows xp.
if you want to go back to windows xp, you can still use alt+f10, as long as you don't delete the recover partition.
Just boot and press Alt+F10, it'll give you recover screen.