ACER laptop does NOT start-up :(

Hi, and another Acer in trouble!
the 1511 LMi this time.

And that only a month after it was fixed.
It had problem with it graph. adaptor.
So I sent it for repairs (it took about 8 freakin' months)
It got a new Graph. Adaptor.
- new Battery
- new lid with WiFi receiver
And after that I tripped on the AC/Adapter forcing me to buy a new one as well.

So back to the current problems. Very plain and simple.
I was playing a game at a friends place. It was time to go home, so I shut down my laptop, close the lid, and go home.

Then when I get home (a 1 minute walk), I remember I still need to check my Mail. I press the power button, nothing happens.

Tried it with only Battery or only Power Supply. No go!

I already hated Acer with all my guts after the first incident.
So I think I'll leave my current opinion about Acer out of this post

Allright, I sort of found out my problem.

I wiggled around with the power adaptor plug, at the back of the laptop. And suddenly it booted. (this all without battery).

The only strange part was, when I inserted the battery it showed 89%
So it should have started without the direct power feed, and with battery inserted, anyway.

Ok, finally I was able to get hold of a friend who is a PC hardware master.
He disassembled my Acer laptop and tested motherboard chips with a voltmeter. As a result he already found one dead diode and replaced it.

However this didn't solve the problem and he went into further testing. He thinks there is also either dead CPU (Intel Pentium M 1.4Ghz) or/and VRM chip (Voltage Regulating Module) small ship. Looks like the part number of my VRM is Maxim 1907A, though I wasn't able to find any online.

The only way to test CPU is to put it in a working laptop. Luckily, my Toshiba laptop has the same CPU Intel Pentium M 1.4Ghz, through with different part number and smaller cache. I hope it won't be a problem to put Acer's possibly dead CPU in Toshiba laptop and test it.

Hopefully the next week my friend will find time to disassemble my Toshiba laptop just to put dead Acer's CPU and to check whether CPU of Acer is dead or working. If CPU is dead then it will be just VRM. No idea how to test it. Though test with voltmeter shows it as more than likely dead because on voltemeter it should show over 1, while it is in fact less than 1. Time will show.

I will post the outcome.

Glad I am not the only one. I also have an Acer Aspire 1690 that is doing the same thing. It started going blank but would restart and work for a few hours, then it would turn on like normal and after 5 minutes go blank while everything remains on. Now I can't even get the ACER welcome screen or the windows logo, nothing, although the power light does come on the battery indicator light comes on. My bluetooth button will light up but the button for wireless will not light up even if i press it, and now a few seconds after it starts up it gets very quiet but the lights stay on, however if I press caps lock or something the caps lock light does not come on. but my question is if i get one of those 2.5 enclosures like he mentioned above can I retrieve the data from my hard drive? and what about my D drive?

Well, I'm assuming that you're having problem with your laptop's motherboard not hard drive,
so you can actually recover your data and keep using your laptop's hard drive as portable.

Just buy one of those 2.5" HDD enclosures and put in it your laptop's hard drive.
You will basically convert your laptop's hard drive into USB external portable hard drive because they are supplied with USB cable.

Make sure that enclosure supports your hard drive interface.
I think your laptop's hard drive interface is IDE/ATA-100.
Don't buy SATA enclosure, they won't work with your hard drive.

These ones should be compatible:
http://www.meritline.com/meritline-usb2 ... -case.html

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-5-External-Hard-D ... dZViewItem

I bought myself generic enclosure from eBay for $8.50 shipped. It works fine.

Good luck!

Another one here...

Laptop 1692 WLMi, 2 years of age but I'm questioning if it'll see the end of the year...

Right now my cd drive is defect, my fan is barely working (after manual repair it still is very loud), my sd card reader isn't working, my touchpad is messed up, my usb slots are acting irregular (connecting and disconnecting at random) and now like the rest of the people here my laptop has trouble booting.

I found that fiddling with the power input plug while repeatedly slamming the litte power button works, but it usually takes 15 minutes. Once it's running it behaves as normal with no videocard or ram or any other sorts of failure. My guess is that the little button with the yellow glow is of poor quality.


It really is ridicilous. never again will I touch any acer product or buy another laptop without at least a 3 year warranty.

another one here
Acer Aspire 5601, bought July 2006 , battery stopped charging all of a sudden, sometimes it boots but mostly just the lights come on, fan come on and then nothing. Tried everything I can think of (removed/switched RAM, checked/repaired HD, reinstalled windows, tried with ubuntu, updated BIOS...).
I have extended warranty from my credit card but I need a diagnostic/repair quote for it and unfortunately this problem is not predictable.
Any updates from anyone else with same issue ?

One problem - Its an acer!

travelmate 2420; it died in the time it took me to go to the kitchen and get a coke
when I went back there was nothing
just silence
and coldness

Acer aspire 5685 , 6 months old .
On Christmas' eve night I've shutdown the pc , disconnected the ac plug cord from it , the external hd and my ipod still, connected via USB but both off.
The next day I have tried to turn on the computer but it was dead frozen .
I have tried to recharge it, then after the power indicator turned from amber to green I've tried again to restart it but no luck!
Any suggestion ?

I'm in the same boat.

Acer 2303. It died 3 months out of warranty. It was just sitting on my desk. I went to get a drink, came back, and it was just like the others. Boycott Acer laptops!

Can anyone start an anti acer webpage?......is a worldwide class action law suit possible?

RRH

It happens in Portugal too!

Well, we all started to sound like a support group of acer laptop widows

My Travelmate 4001 died last week from the Mikhlos Feher syndrome. Starting to promisse big things, and then... it just died on the field... from one power-on to another!

I read all your posts and gathered with the diagnosis from the repair shop man I went to, it seems like they all suffered from a congenital motherboard insufficiency...

From Acer I hear the same 50euros thing... that you'll send the laptop to them and if you deny the repairment U loose the money! But I heard that if the repairment is over 350euros they claim it as unrepearable *plum* and send it back to U.

Is it true?

The Acer support asked me to pay $350 upfront and then some more after the repair...! No thanks. A$$h0l3s

Hallo from Greece! I have the same problem with a Travelmate 2303lm. At first, before some months i was geting usb overvoltage errors. Later, when i was booting everything was normal, but the touchpad was turned on (not by me) while I was constantly kept it off because i use a mouse. After that period it started hanging on shutdown and i was removing all power to shut it down. Later I noticed that gentle hits to the lcd caused flickering. Lately the lcd brigthness was little dimmed, but that did not prelude me for the follow up. Before 4-5 days I returned from work I opened it and pressed the power button. It started and then it shutdown at the moment that lcd shows the post screen, that was the last time i saw it lighting. I tried pressing the power again but nothing happened. I removed cords and bats and i ended at the well known story: power led on, fan on for 4-5sec, hd on for 2-3 spins, dvd one long flash, caps, numlock led one single flash. I bought it on Sept of 2004 and I was pushing the hell out of it for all those years (Many many many miles on the road to university, and home 24/7 on the net to download everything. Actually, i always used standby for the move and i only restarted for udpate appliance. I cant remember having it shutdown. Well, i cant complain, i smashed it on the work.
Anyway, I think there is still hope. There is a great deal for all the common faults to be the inverter of the lcd. I think of it as the most possible faulty part because of the above mentioned flickering and dimming. Memory is ok, hd, cpu and dvd are ok (tested on other systems). I dont think it is mobo because if graphics failed (acers have intergrated graphics system in chips with several other devices, like io, pci etc) the whole system goes down which means no leds no fans no disks no martini no party. Afterall garphic system uses memory from ram and thats why a friend said that pushing the ram slots solves the problem, because graphics ram goes online again. My point is that if graphics chip goes dead in an acer, then nothing on the laptop can work. Moreover, if a chip goes dead there is no resurection. It is just bye-bye. Several friends are telling that *if* some condition is held *then* the system boots. That means that is a possible contact connection issue. And that is my theory too. A bad contact problem in the inverter of the lcd. This inverter supplies the backligth lamp with high voltage and it normally heats up big time. To do that it uses a coil. Either overworked or bad constucted from factory, the coil may fail and brake. Heat helps a lot to that direction itself. When the laptop boots and finds no lighting circuit to adjust, an error is reported and system stops for self protection reasons. Thats where system hangs. There is no point on turning to outside display, the keyboard has no authority yet. That means you seat and watch nothing because laptop is not willling to move on for it may be its last step. It might as well know that the coil produces several kilovolts and if a sort-circuit arises all the volts will spread to the rest of its body with the speed of ...ligthning.
Nevermind, thats my little conspiracy theory. Im working to figure out the cause. I think what a friend said before about the bios battery is very interesting and i will try. Nevertheless, Im not quiting, dont you either.

Came across this forum on a google search. I bought a acer 5100 Dec. 2006. Last August, sent it back for warranty work. They replaced the motherboard, the keyboard cover (part that goes around keyboard)-cause it had melted!-and some other part.

About a week ago, my wife was using it, and it came up with a message that said something along the lines of "there is a problem with xxx and your computer is shutting down to protect itself". There was a lot more, but I wasn't able to read it before it shut down.

Now when I tried to get it started up, the acer screen comes on, then goes black, nothing happening.

Searching around it seems odds that something overheated again. This appears to be a common problem, chips overheating and dying.

I came across a listing on ebay for a company in CA that will diagnosis your computer, give you a qoute, and repair it if you give the go ahead. The price you pay on ebay is for return shipping. There is no fee if it can't be fixed, just the $10 you paid for the auction.
So I emailed them describing my problem, and they said it sounds like the motherboard, and that they'd replace the chinese made chips with TI chips.

Now the thing is, which chips would these be? where can I find the Texas Instruments replacements? Are they stock, or do they need some kind of custom programming?

I have nothing to lose here, it just ticks me off that a laptop would only last 14 months.

John