I would connect another monitor to it. That way you can confirm or deny if the broken hinge disrupted the connection. If it still doesn't boot, then you know that it's a power problem.

Before you say it's the mother board, there are other possibilities. You say only the fan is running. If you are sure of that, then why isn't the power supply sending juice to the HD? Since I haven't done any hardware work on laptops, does the HD get it's power directly from the power supply like a desktop does? If it does, then it might not be the mother board. It could be the power supply.

I don't know where to obtain spare power adapter to test your statement. Besides, the same non-boot up result appears if I try the battery only. So, I doubt that it's a power supply. Perhaps power jack or something out of power resistors of the motherboard have fallen down?

I've ordered 2.5" HDD enclosure a few days ago. As soon as it arrives I can test HDD.
But I believe in laptops, HDD gets power through motherboard. I maybe wrong as I'm not an expert in laptops either. 🙂

i agree with don2007 i would try everything there is before i would even consider buying anything.

to me it seems like it's a psu problem but you did say the fan was running so it is working, so just try what don2007 said and tell us what happens ;]

If it was power supply problem only, the laptop would boot up off the battery. But both, power supply or battery makes lights blinks and that's it. I don't know where to obtain a spare power supply, but I doubt that it is a cause. Perhaps power jack problem, but again then laptop should have booted up off the battery.

I was wondering if someone could help me to diagnose the problem with my laptop. Acer TravelMate 4000 LCi, (P-M 1.4Ghz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HDD, DVD-CDRW). Purchased brand new back in Dec. 2004 from Amazon. Started using since summer 2004. It had 1 year warranty which is of course expired.

I damn the day I bought Acer listening to advices of my Indian and Chinese friends from university. I personally own Toshiba Satellite M35-S359, which has been working great since Jan. 2004. I purchased Acer as a second laptop for other home users.

This Acer laptop was basically a desktop replacement. I never had a problem with it before. However, in the morning of the day before yesterday I've discovered that Acer wouldn't start-up.

The power indicator blinks from yellow to green and screen doesn't power up at all.
However, when I unplugged it and reinserted battery it booted up fine and I used it for the entire day.

The next morning it wouldn't start-up at all.
Again, the power indicator blinks from yellow to green and screen doesn't power up at all.
Several attempts to reinsert or remove battery
plug or unplug AC adapter didn't help.

I removed HDD and put it back but it didn't help. I must buy 2.5" enclosure to make sure that problem is not caused by HDD, which I doubt.

When I plug laptop in or insert its battery, the laptop lights up on its own. I mean it's power button lights up but again nothing happens. Just power indicator blinks from yellow to green, and that's it.

I thought of the following causes.

1. Power connection problem (Jack went down, laptop's AC input etc.). Because it was acting weird. When I plug it in it powers up on its own, without pushing power button. But still it won't boot at all. LCD is dark with no signs of life.

The same happens if I insert battery. Even if I shut it down via power button, sometimes it's power status light remains green. Then I've to push power button again to shut it completely down.

1. LCD is down. Because I found a crack on each hinge. I was "surprised". This laptop was never used away from home. It was basically desktop replacement which was very well taken care of. Crappy plastic! I hate Acer.

2. HDD is down. I can test it later if I buy 2.5" external enclosure for this purpose.

3. Motherboard is down, which is more than likely. Maybe overheating issue?
   I'm afraid this maybe a cause which fried motherboard.

I've to admit that although it is Pentium M Centrino, its fan was always running on, which made me think of overheating issue and I was even thinking of buying a cooling pad a few weeks earlier. Who knows, perhaps it would have prevented current dead-stalemate situation.

Note, laptop was perhaps on 20 hours a day!
And even when it was shut down in the nights, it was never unplugged and the battery was always there too. In other words, it was charging the battery 24 hours a day.

I'll appreciate any valuable advice and remedy!

Thanks.****

AH! I have the exact same problem on my newer Acer Aspire. It doesn't boot with the battery or just plugged in. The hard drive works perfectly in my desktop computer and I tried it with different RAM. I'm guessing it's the motherboard. The fans come on but no bios or anything, tried plugging in monitor but..it doesn't say no signal, just black. Thanks?

Hi All,

I'll be keeping my eye on this thread because my rather new Acer Aspire 1690 notebook has just succumbed to exactly the same fate as alex's and Intro's.

The Acer website lists a sequence to test for PS issues, and that sequence indicated negative in my case.

Reseating ram, HD, wireless card had no effect.

Additionally, my notebook will not boot from bootable CD, nor will it display anything on an external monitor, nor can I access the bios.

At this point, I've come to the end of the list of measures I can think of to get the computer to boot. As a next step, I'll try to salvage the data from the HD before getting a more professional opinion on the computer's reparability / tossability. Unless, that is, anyone can suggest other diagnostics here.

I too am beginning to suspect a big problem such as a dead motherboard. Ack!

Andrew

Hi All,

I'll be keeping my eye on this thread because my rather new Acer Aspire 1690 notebook has just succumbed to exactly the same fate as alex's and Intro's.

The Acer website lists a sequence to test for PS issues, and that sequence indicated negative in my case.

Reseating ram, HD, wireless card had no effect.

Additionally, my notebook will not boot from bootable CD, nor will it display anything on an external monitor, nor can I access the bios.

At this point, I've come to the end of the list of measures I can think of to get the computer to boot. As a next step, I'll try to salvage the data from the HD before getting a more professional opinion on the computer's reparability / tossability. Unless, that is, anyone can suggest other diagnostics here.

I too am beginning to suspect a big problem such as a dead motherboard. Ack!

Andrew

I fully agree that it can't be RAM, I reinserted both RAM memory sticks and it didn't help of course.

Today I've received 2.5" HDD external USB enclosure and my HDD works just fine as
external hard drive connected to Dell desktop.

So, the problem is not in HDD either.
And by the way, it took me an hour or so to unscrew HDD from it's metal caddy. Those 4 screws on sides of the caddy were extremely tight and made of super hard metal!
My screwdriver tip got a bit damaged.
I could unscrew them only after 5th or 6 attempts putting a towel on the handle of a screwdriver. I HATE ACER even more now.
Why the hell on Earth would somebody put HDD screws so tight that they are almost impossible to open?! Freaking Acer idiots!

Back to the problem, it's definitely one of the motherboards sections. There is no way to test it without help of professional hardware master.

I think that replacement of motherboard will cost over $200.

It may also be one of the power resistors or whatever chips of the motherboard which may need to be replaced.

But even if failed chip cost less than $20,
I'm sure that hardware master will insist on replacement of motherboard and charge you over $200. Or he can still replace malfunctioned chip and charge you for the whole motherboard. Unless you know someone trusted who is honest person. 🙂

I'll see if any of our few local laptop repair centers will be able to diagnose the problem and give me estimate of how much would it cost to repair it, not asking me extra money just for diagnosing and giving estimate.

Thanks.

Gezzzz ! I got the same problem on my notebook Acer Aspire 3003 WLMi, does not boot up.
The power light comes up, the fan start to spin and that's about it. :/
And also turn on by itself when i plug the power like alex mentioned.

It happend out of the blue. anyone got at clue or is really the MB?

Wow, now this is geting weird, I have the exact same problem with my Acer Travelmate 2303, my computer tech opened it and is 90% sure that its the motherboard, everything is in its place, and power supply is good, but its weird that it automatically runs the fan and lights when plugin in to the wall. Please post some updates the first one that gets to solve this mystery, it will help so many of us!

Thanks
Emanuel

I have exactly the same start up problem on and acer Aspire 5022 (Bought Feb 2006). I had the problem checked into. At first they thought it was overheating fan problem as it is intermittent and then was diagnosed as motherboard problem.
It will turn on on occasion but there is nothing that seems to indicate when it will or won't. So is useless. And very frustrating...
Would definitely be interested if there is any solvable reason before I buy a new laptop! Thanks

Same problem.
However, my laptop starts sporadically after trying to power on 15-20 times.
Once it powers on properly and shows the splash screen, everything works fine, no problems whatsoever.

So, i am gueesing it is something to with the component on the motherboard that handles booting?

hi all...

looks like we all got the same kinda problem i hope someone can help me with mine....i have an acer aspire 1690..and for some silly reason it has just decided to become a pain in ones bottom...it boots up as normal but i got a complete black screen not even a flicker of light there but it is booting up as normal...now with mine booting up i think this will rule out it being a motherboard problem...someone said to me it could be a software problem..the worst thing is i even tried to plug it into an external monitor which is also an acer but to no avail that didnt work either and yes i did click the button to go external monitor..

well thats my whinging finished i just hope there is someone out there that can help us all...

thanks

Well, I'm yet another person who's joined this happy crew. About a week ago I started having severe blue screen issues, random crashes with increasing regularity. My first hunch was that my drive was at fault here, and indeed, I do detect a number of faults with both chkdsk and the check ubuntu linux runs on startup.

Needless to say, the crashes don't stop, quite the opposite. I get rebooted constantly, to my increasing irritation. Since I didn't want to take the time to do a clean reinstall of Windows XP right then, (I really need to finish a report and wasn't about to waste time with such rubbish, I was thinking) I just kept on trying to make things work anyway. Some more diagnostic tools installed, to no avail.

Now as I get rebooted, the screen is blank. HD light is on, fan runs, but no image.
I hard power off and on again, and it works. This worked a few times, now I'm stuck in the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle.

Strangely enough, sometimes I get as far as GRUB before it freezes completely. I've even managed to reach ubuntus version of chkdsk once, after 20 or so attempts. I'm at a loss here...

Hi all,

I too have the identical problem - i wont list it as i think we all know the issue by now! Mine is an acer travelmate 4000WLMi - i am trying to go through all the possible problems now - but feel the only way to properly check is by getting a new motherboard. anyone any ideas or suggestions? all will be greatfully received!

Cheers, Gaz

+1 ...

Aspire 5050

winVista + Ubuntu Feisty

a while ago it was starting if i waited like 3 minutes, yesterday it wouldn't start at all, nothing - problem started just after a week uptime, and it heats up increadibly... i think i just burned it... 😟

I've got an Acer Travelmate 2300 and had a similar problem last night...

I was installing Ubuntu to an external HD and ran into trouble with it overwriting XPs MBR on the machine and Ubuntu's bootloader didn't work at all, gave me an error... After I tried (unsuccessfully) to rewrite the MBR in the repair console (due to a administrator password issue that is a known XP issue for preloaded machines) I rebooted the machine and it wouldn't POST...

I've tried reseating the RAM and HD, I've removed the battery and tried to start without it, I've tried to start without the PS, and I've tried everything with it hooked up to an external monitor which I am sure works... So far nothing...

Today I'm going to pick up a 44-40pin IDE cable so I can at least see about getting my data off the drive...

I assume it's a MB issue...

And the real kicker is just yesterday afternoon I screwed up my car by over-torquing some nuts... Computer and car all in one day and summer classes start up on Monday.

I've had an Acer Travelmate 2300 for 2 1/2 years. It stays put at home (I use it because it takes less space than a desktop).

This year it started to cause problems in not starting. If I'd used it for a day, it would take another day before it would start again, whether shut down or on standby - all this from the power supply. It's got worse, so time down takes longer before I can get any sign of life from the machine. The power light on the front shows juice.

The other day I disconnected the power cable for half an hour and pulled out the battery pack for 10 minutes. A couple of hours later it started up.

It's driving me up the wall, as I'm completely at the mercy of the laptop and whether it's ready to start or not.

A couple of months ago I posted a message to technical support on one of the Acer websites and have heard nothing.

Looking around the web, this seems to be depressingly common in Acer laptops.

Thoughts: a) it looks like the battery on mine is either dead or not retaining charge; b) no idea why it won't start up on mains juice; c) if it starts sometimes, I conclude that the mother board can't be fried.

Anyone found ways through this crap? It may be low cost, but not if it falls over.

Well, I believe my problem was the video adapter on the mother board or some other part of the motherboard itself. These things do happen in most comptuers, I'm just used to tower systems where I can replace a part easily and cheaply. I've replaced the laptop since it would have cost $400-$500 to replace/repair the MB.

'Well, I believe my problem was the video adapter on the mother board or some other part of the motherboard itself. These things do happen in most comptuers, I'm just used to tower systems where I can replace a part easily and cheaply. I've replaced the laptop since it would have cost $400-$500 to replace/repair the MB.'

My experience with computers prior to the Acer was with Macs. Nothing like this ever happened and certainly not in such a short time. I still have a Mac laptop going strong after 6 years.

Another Acer in trouble. Acer 2010 with 2 x 512mb, will not start, gets continuous beep during POST and no further. Fan runs for a moment, no screen display, LED light remain on, which indicates to me some power is on. Swapped the two memory cards /slots, tried with one memory card, same problem. Tried both ac power and battery, same results. Could it be both memory cards are faulty, or perhaps the MOBO? Sent emails to Acer, they're not interested, as it 's out of warranty. Quote on motherboard is nearly the same price as I paid for the laptop. Different models have nearly the same problems, what does this say about ACER products? Is it the quality of components they use.

Hi guys, I bought an Acer Travelmate and My god I have caught hell for it, My computer has gone through some of the exact same issues, I bought it in December of last year so the warranty is still good. The first time I got it back It was still broken, so I sent it back, I was to recieve the unit today but the company mixed my computer up in shipping sending me the wrong one, Acer is garbage, the customer service is bad, and we were all fools for buying their computers , we deserve better than to be treated like our money doesn't matter

Hi every body. Sunday morning I joined the club. My acer travelmate died with the black screen and the fan running. I tried to connect to an external video but it didn't worked. I can see the blinking light ... all the stuff you described before (I hope to recover the hard drive).
To add something I did. Swiched off took the cable and the battery off, waited for a couple of hours, without battery and lead push the power button for 5-10 sec and put everything back again... didn't worked (suggestion by IT guy of PC World).

Please keep sending update on this topic just to be sure that I had to buy a new PC (desktop this time!)
thanks
Sandeman

People are not posting any updates, i think everyone got tired and sold it for parts as is......Im considering doing the very same thing, how much will it be worth? $200.00 or less?

Here's the response received from Acer. Zero comment or response to my query, except to outline what to pay for a service. I'm not impressed.:

'Hello, Thank you for contacting Acer.

Regarding your enquiry,

This would be classed as a chargeable repair, the process would be the following.

There will be a £41.13 charge taken from you before your machine is brought in for repair. You will then be given courier details so that you may arrange collection of your machine for shipment to our repair centre. Once received in the repair centre it will undergo assessment by one of our technicians. They will draw up a written proposal for you containing full details pertaining to your repair. This will be sent to you by post giving you ten days to respond.

Once you have received the proposal you have the option to reject it, which means the £41.13 will cover the engineer and couriers fees, and the machine will be returned to you un-repaired. If you accept the proposal the £41.13 is deducted from the final bill and the repair then goes ahead.

After ten days, if your proposal is not signed and returned to us by fax or post the repair is defaulted as rejected, your machine is not repaired, and shipped back to you.

If you would like to book your machine in for an assessment please let us know and we will make the necessary arrangements.

Regards

Acer Technical Support Team'

Me too. TM 2200. Won't charge or power up, with or without the battery in place (but charger PSU is OK on another machine). Sometimes flashes orange LED, sometimes not. Curious very faint ticking noise from inside the machine when the PSU is connected. Mother board already replaced once under guarantee (they said) when the charging became unreliable, but failed again just after the end of the guarantee.

Call me paranoid, but is there anyone that has a TravelMate that does NOT suffer from this problem just after the guarantee runs out?

Hypothetically, they could build in a real-time clock that triggers an emulation of these symptoms 15 months after powering on for the first time. Thus increasing the market for new laptops. But of course, such a reputable company would not do that.

But there is already one company that does something similar, and quite openly. If you do a test print on an HP 3210 printer, it will tell you the date the cartridges were installed, and their expiry date. After the expiry date, they will not work at all.

Call me paranoid, but I wonder if the practice is more widespread than we think.

K.

Right, so here is my story.
I have an Acer Aspire 1690. Bought it in Singapore and I live in Ireland.
I started having this problem back in December. I took my laptop to Bali for my holidays with the parents and it worked fine when I got on the plane from Singapore.
Once we got to the hotel in Bali I would try to start it up but the screen remained black and you could hear it wouldnt start up properly. So we thought it might be the high humidity that might be screwing around with it. During my stay there I tried to start it up a few times and no success.
When we got back to Singapore the following day I tried turning it on and nothing. Since it was the weekend I had to wait before I could do anything.
On the Monday before I called their support line I tried turning it on, and miraculously it worked. From that day on, I didnt have any problems with it what so ever.

Just a few weeks ago I got the same problem. But as the days went by it changed.. Eventually it would start properly but the screen remained black. If I left it running it would reach my desktop and it would seem everything else was working fine.

From the black screen it soon turned into a white one from startup. Or a black one which would constantly flicker (black to white). But the weird thing was there were times when it would start properly. It would get about halfway through the loading and then the screen would even go black or white. Right now it has been working for 20mins as I write this.

Now everything is working fine except when I try loading up a game, then the screen will surely die on me. By tomorrow the problem might be back again. But the thing I dont understand is, if I'm having these screen problems, why does it sometimes work for me?! And why might it work and die within 5mins, or run all night and not work the following day I try turning it on..

Any ideas.. Anyone?

My Acer Aspire 3003 started doing this last week. Sometimes it would load up - other times it would try its best, on other occasions it would get part way towards loading before the screen went black with white moving lines on it, not unoike white noise on the telly, and on others it would simply power on, I'd hear a whirrr of the fan and then it would go black and quiet - with the power light remaining on.

I scoured the net and found this page where many people seem to be describing the same symptoms as I'm suffering.

I spent about 3 hours just trying to turn it last Friday then noticed something that seemed to make it work. The little plastic tog at the end of the power adapter had got caught under the laptop near where the power plug connects to the laptop.

Once that had happened I tried something. I found out that if I pinched the laptop, with my fingers, on the right hand side (near the back where the power adapter connects) and held the top and bottom of the keyboard half of the laptop together quite tightly - I could start it every time.

Now I'm no hardware expert but I know a little and that suggests to me that some connection in the power supply must be loose. I admit that holding your laptop together is a far from perfect solution nor is clipping it together with a D-clip or some other make-shift quick-fix but I wonder whether anyone else has come across this anomaly and whether this works for them - which might give way to someone knowing far more about laptop hardware than me suggesting where exactly the problem may lie.

Perhaps, however, I have an entirely different problem - but I agree with everyone who has said they are suspicious of suggestions that they may have a motherboard problem. When it does power up it functions perfectly!

Well I took the plunge and disassembled the 2010 laptop, after all I had nothing to loose! I believe our problems could be due to poor quality control on the mother boards. My mother board seemed to have lots of fluff stuck on to it, as if the protected coating they put onto it, was put on, in not in a clean environment Few solder connections where also a bit iffy. This could be our problems, bad solder connections on the MoBo somewhere and they all lead to the same problem. My problems seem to be centered around the memory board connections. I was able to start the laptop normally by applying enough pressure on the memory connector 200 pins. Running the memory test , "Memtest-86 v 3.2" I was able to introduce errors by jiggling the memory board connector. I can virtually predict when it is going to fail.
I hope this helps.

ok but you fixed it by doing that or you still have tha same problem?
thanks

Unfortunately I don't have the equipment to re solder the 200 pin memory connectors. I can't identify which particular pins are faulty. By jamming a piece of thin cardboard between the memory board and the MoBo, which creates a slight pressure on the MoBo, I'm getting by. I know it's only a temporary fix and the problem could get worse. This works for me the majority of the time. In a one week period it only failed to start once and when it starts it keeps going with no problems. In the meantime I'm looking around for a used MoBo or a computer repair shop to tackle the solder job.

Hi, i have a travelmate 240.
The problem is the same.
all test are done without battery.

The pc boot itself after connecting power supply.
But the boot is not completed. Fan turn on,power led turn on, keyboard leds blinks but the lcd is black. no signal.

I disassembled laptop and and put mother board on the desk. now , when i push on the cpu the laptop boots currectly.
Fans start fast, keyboard leds blink, fan go slow, keyboard led blink again and then lcd is turned on.
Seems to be a second boot phase.
The laptop works good. after turning it off, the laptop boot fine pushing start button.

If i disconnect power supply from wall and then reconnect to wall, the problem is the same. laptop boot itself, with blank lcd.etc etc

Seem to be a bad solder on the motherboard that prevent the correct boot.

any help is good. let me know.

anyway the board is of bad quality process. not good hardware.replace the board is unuseful. the problem may appear again. better buy a new laptop i think.

hi

I appreciate all of the posts on this subject. I am glad it is not just me. My problem is different in that i do not get the fan or intermittement usage. I got nothing from the PSU and battery would work if charged it would appear but it is not charging. I wanted to share what I sent to tech support. If anyone has ideas, please let me know.

Thanks,
Joe

Hello, any help is greatly appreciated.

I usually run my laptop from the Power supply unit (PSU). The battery life has always been short but that was never a big deal. Today, even though I had the PSU plugged in the laptop was running off of battery. I checked the connection, but it drained the battery and went into hibernation mode. I tried the PSU from multiple outlets and the PSU has a green LCD when plugged into the outlet. However, attempts to power on the laptop with the battery removed gets me nothing. No partial boot or fan turning on, completely nothing. I PURCHASED a SEPERATE PSU and I get the SAME result. I do not get any LCD lights on the front of the laptop like I use to do when the PSU is plugged in. No LCD on laptop with either PSU.

When the battery is plugged in, the battery indicator light on the front will blink a couple of times when I try to turn the laptop on but no results. This is regardless of whether the laptop PSU is plugged in or not.

I really enjoy this laptop and I use it every day for work and business. It is very important to me to be up and running. Please advise and call me right away if you need to.

Thank you,
Joe

Hello,

To all that has been having the issue of Acer laptop computer not booting.
After reading all of your posts I have found out that most of them are all the same and came to a conclusion that the power supply, ram, hard drive, and video card is just fine. Through thinking of most computer if nothing happens and everything works just fine then it must be the mother board.

If you have a volt-a-meter then you can test the motherboard on if its getting power how ever not a recomond if you are wanting to void warentee. Last choice option. But from hearing everybodys statement that it is a motherboard issue..

If looking into getting another laptop I recomond eather of this options: HP,Compaq, Sony, Apple, or Dell <-- Not a good choice but they are better then Acer.

If have any questions please let me know.

I had similar problem with my Acer Aspire 3690

First I thought it was a problem with RAM, processor or even motherboard.

But, I found a solution and it was none of above causing the problem.

The problem was with small plastic thing that is pushed in when you close notebook.

In fact it was stuck, and always when I pressed power button only HDD led was flashing for a moment and fan started to work for few seconds, after that it stopped and there was nothing on the screen.

Now, I am really lucky that it was only that small plastic thing causing the problem.
Hope in your case is same problem. Otherwise you should be thinking about repairing a part of your notebook that could cause the problem.

Regards,
flo77is

zankfrappa wrote: This year it started to cause problems in not starting. If I'd used it for a day, it would take another day before it would start again, whether shut down or on standby - all this from the power supply. It's got worse, so time down takes longer before I can get any sign of life from the machine. The power light on the front shows juice.
The other day I disconnected the power cable for half an hour and pulled out the battery pack for 10 minutes. A couple of hours later it started up.

Thanx zankfrappa ! Simple but right idea!
My Acer TM2310 had a problem like that. It wont start standart way, no reaction pushing on off button. Light yellow battery charge led, after some time light in green. I try several tricks to fullish power system, no way. Then I disconnect the power cable and pulled out the battery pack for a half an hour. After I connect it all back notebook started up after pushing on off button.
I think there is a problem in Inactivity timeout memory. After some time out of maintence memory erasing all data.

My decission - to have Acer like a second computer, the main computer should be some more serious. It's not reliable.

Well as many of you have said already it is a motherboard problem.

My problem was along the same lines, with differences here and there. I took it to the acer tech center in Singapore (where I purchased my laptop, and I decided to wait till i got here since any repairs would be a lot cheaper here) and I got an answer back saying that I had a faulty motherboard and lcd..

I had this laptop just under two years and I had problems from the start, the main one being the fan burning out within 5months. I was told the repair would cost around 500-600 euros. Which is practically a new laptop so I told them to hand me back my faulty acer laptop.

So I have moved on to scrapping it for spare parts, not a great deal left but I'm turning my hard drive into a nice small portable external, RAM being put into a different laptop, and I'll probably sell the power supply, battery and fan on ebay for peanuts.

Not having much trust in anything now a days, I've purchased my Dell laptop with three year warrantee which will at least guarantee it will last me longer than the acer did.

Best of luck to the rest of you.. hope you have better luck than me.

Also, a faulty LAN could be a reason for not booting.
You could try pressing shortly on power on button few times rapidly, during that light on LAN will blink. After that normally press on power button and laptop should start, but the problem isn't solved.
If you don't fix LAN it may cause some other troubles, ex. mouse will stop responding.
I think that same could happen with any faulty device like PCI flash memory, PCMCIA slot, USB, etc.

Also, a faulty LAN could be a reason for not booting.
You could try pressing shortly on power on button few times rapidly, during that light on LAN will blink. After that normally press on power button and laptop should start, but the problem isn't solved.
If you don't fix LAN it may cause some other troubles, ex. mouse will stop responding.
I think that same could happen with any faulty device like PCI flash memory, PCMCIA slot, USB, etc.

I have fixed several Acer 280/290 series (5 pieces )very easily and happy to share it. the ones i have unplugged are still alive today.

Plug out the BIOS battery and leave it Unplugged!

voila.

enjoy , hope it works for you to

I live in Taiwan and bought an Acer Aspire 1690 about 1 1/2 years ago. It was a great computer for the price with a fantastic screen and I assumed that since Taiwan has a good reputation for LCDs and Laptops I would be okay with Acer.

However.. about a week after my year's warranty expired the combo drive stopped burning DVDs, then a few weeks later stopped reading anything at all. I tried cleaning it with no luck. Then the plastic drive face fell off and the clips broke.

Another month on and the keyboard started getting erratic. Then the fan started making a very loud noise with the laptop getting even hotter than usual (and this machine does get VERY hot anyway).

Now my laptop complains about resource conflicts with the WLAN card at boot up, combined with BSODs and other fun. I assumed this was a heat related problem but the issues are still here starting from cold so any damage has obviously already been done. I will speak to Acer but I assume I will be wasting my time.

At roughly US$1,000 this Acer was a good deal but with a year's good use plus a few months of semi-functionality it worked out to be a very expensive computer. I nearly bought a Sony Vaio but decided the Acer had more features for a better price, but next time I won't be tempted by anything less than a full 3 year warranty.

Hi all,

I also purchased Acer 1694 WMLi two years ago.

Unended list of problems, two times went with the tech support.

Now it deals with the same problem described at this thread. It does not power on, and power LEDs blink from ambar to green. The laptop does not charge the battery, it just tries to boot a soon as any power source is connected, but without succes. No bios screen , just the fan, and the HDD lighting constantly.

I do not know, if it could have been due to Linux, a conflicting PC-Game, cleaning the screen with alcohol, I am going mad about all this. I did not performed any bios upgrade, of course.

I will contact the support again, I hope there is a solution, and I can gather my data before I send again the laptop.

I didn´t believed that laptops were so sensitivy, until I bought mine.

Thanks for the information, hope that we find a solution.

Hi! I have a problem with my Acer computer too. It's a laptop and a few weeks ago the keyboard and the mouse stopped working correctly. Whenever I turn on the computer neither of them work; they don't cause any reaction on the screen. But if I remove the battery, plug the computer in and turn it on, they work perfectly. Is this a battery problem or do you think it's something worse? Thanks!

I have Acer Aspire 5570Z. Same problem cropped up out of the blue after 3 months of use since I purchased it. It will just freeze all of a sudden. Have to power it off using power button. On pressing power button again, the fan seems to turn on but neither the screen comes up nor it boots. (Tried connecting another monitor also.)

The dealer where I bought this told me to detach the battery and power adapter and re-insert the battery again. If I do these steps it does boot and functions normally for a while but ends up getting into above problem after a few minutes of usage.

The dealer says, it should be a problem with power supply and asked to talk to Acer technical support.

Got a strange answer from Acer. They told me to re-install touchpad drivers and try. I don't think that makes any sense.

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?

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.

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 bullshit 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

ive been having the same problem, but mine only seems to work if i squeeze the bottom left and corner really hard, and then it boots on. if i let go of the corner it freezes in all sorts of weird lines.

it started out by randomly freezing with a white screen and a bunch of black lines now it wont turn on unless i squeeze it

I'm pretty alarmed with all the stories i've been reading here. To be honest, i sort of regret buying this Acer Aspire 5720 for different reasons than above. I do hope that nothing happens to it largely down to the fact that the computer was bought in Australia and i can see Acer being anal about the warranty despite it being an international warranty.

Same problem with an Acer TravelMate 4502LCi. Yesterday when I first tried to boot it would not boot, the fans started but it would go no further. The power light would remain on. After fiddeling around with the battery and power supply I was able to get it going occasionally, but I would get a blue screen with the "Driver IRQL Not Less or Equal" message, and my computer would reboot.

I managed to get into safe mode where everything seemed fine, and left my computer on overnight downloading some software updates. I was downloading iTunes, because the only thing I did different the morning when this all started was plug my iPod touch into the laptop to charge while it was booting, so I thought that might have something to do with it. I didnt have itunes on it previously.

But when I went to the laptop this morning and tried to get out of the screensaver it had frozen. And it won't start at all now.

I'm not impressed.

Exactly same problem with my acer 3680. Failed after 15 months. Was using it and it suddenly go blank without any warning.

Maybe we can start class action lawsuit against Acer?

We had the same problem with a Acer Travelmate 230.

The laptop only works when the AC adapter is plugged in and after pulling out the plug while the laptop was still running, the laptop wouldn't start up anymore.
Everything seemd to start, except the LCD, it stayed black. Also hooking up an external monitor didn't work.

I opened up almost everything and disconnected most things and put them back. And now the LCD is working again.

These are the things I disconnected en reconnected:

• HD
• CD Drive
• Keyboard
• the connectors from the LCD to the motherboard
• the connector from the on/off, Function buttons to the motherboard
• the tiny cell battery (holding the BIOS settings and the clock)
• RAM
• connector from touchpad to the motherboard

That's about it, i think. When I reconnected everything and started the laptop, everything worked fine. The first time, the BIOS complained about loosing it settings or clock or something like that.

I think disconnecting the tiny cell battery or reconnecting the LCD connectors did the trick.

Hope I could help.

If there is a class action against Acer, count me in....my Acer 5762 WLMi has done a very similar thing to what I see described here.....On Tuesday I went to bed with the laptop and me getting along fine.....on Wednesday morning, it was black screened and silent and it will not boot up. Pressing the power button gets a rise for a bit, showing there is power, the DVD/CD drive seems to awaken and seconds later all goes silent. Tried the remove the power cord and battery bit described on the ACER support site but no go. Through out the nearly 2 years I've owned the
Acer, I've found their support to be nigh on to ridiculously awful.I'm now using a Sony Vaio purchased in 1996!

If there is a class action against Acer, count me in....my Acer 5762 WLMi has done a very similar thing to what I see described here.....On Tuesday I went to bed with the laptop and me getting along fine.....on Wednesday morning, it was black screened and silent and it will not boot up. Pressing the power button gets a rise for a bit, showing there is power, the DVD/CD drive seems to awaken and seconds later all goes silent. Tried the remove the power cord and battery bit described on the ACER support site but no go. Through out the nearly 2 years I've owned the
Acer, I've found their support to be nigh on to ridiculously awful.I'm now using a Sony Vaio purchased in 1996!

This sounds more like an empty battery.
Try using a different AC Adaptor, maybe the laptop doesn't get any power from AC Adaptor.
Or the AC connector maybe broke. Maybe try a fully charged battery from another laptop.

My Acer Aspire 5612 also started having problems about a month ago. It was purchased in sepetember 2007.

Sometimes it would start but then it would have a problem starting windows and i would have to choose start windows normally or the last good known configuration. Or it would do hard drive check with the blue screen.

It would also do as mentioned above, fan turns on and the power light goes on but blank screen, and sometimes it would make a loud beeping noise.

Has anyone found a solution for this?

Don't think I'm nuts....
Got a travelmate myself....

Question... If you all turn over your lappy's, and look into the skrew holes with a flashlight/torch,
how many of you are missing skrews you didn't realize you were missing???

If you have to squeeze a corner of your lappy to get it to work, the problem is physical...
My TM was feeling kreeky.. not solid... and I had my rdive slide out when I was removing a DVD.
I mean the whole case slid out.
So I looked at the skrew holes and was missing 5, with 2 others very loose.
Turns out it's a common prob with Acers.
Anything loose will wear.. or pull.. or break... and pulled wires and hdwr will sometimes connect and sometimes "not".

You should all look at physical problems causing your inconsistencies.
GL,
Stocky

Hi folks,

I just had the same issue happen tonight with my Acer Aspire 1690. Locked up whilst playing a game, I did a hard reboot, and now it will not turn back on. Tried the Acer recommended power reset as per their support page (it was the only thing about the computer not starting up) - no happy. Anyhow, when I press the power button, the fan starts, and it does the normal whirring and a few HDD chatters then goes completely silent. This is the third big issue I have had with this laptop. First was cracked hinges and blotches on the lcd, sent to acer and they fixed the hinges but not the blotches, then the lcd went (1 month after warranty), so that cost me $500 to fix (probably should have researched more, as I now know it was a pretty easy backlight or lcd board fix), and now this. Anyhow, I feel a little bit ripped off tonight, I've not had these multiple issues with any of my older desktop computers, and It's hard to see a realistic reason why this should happen to a machine you pay $2250 for after only 3 years.

Disapointed Wil

Apologies in advance for the long post, but it's an importantly detailed one.

I bought my laptop back in March '07, and it worked relatively fine up until taking it in the beginning of January of '08. I had some relatively minor problems/annoyances, with the screen brightness not staying bright, and some driver issues with the web cam interfering with using my canon scanner, but overall pretty good. So then the latch closing the printer broke, and since it was still under warranty I took it into the Acer repair depot in Mississauga. I decided to drive it in and pay the gas myself, because I wanted to make sure it arrived in one piece and that I recieved it in one piece. When I got the laptop back... the latch was fixed, but the computer didn't work. So I had Purolator pick it up this time, and Fed-Ex shipped it back - and when I opened it up, it didn't work immediately, but once I plugged it in it was fine. So I had it working for a couple a weeks... and then it wasn't working again. And to clarify not working, I mean various blue screens, black screens, blinking cursors, etc etc etc. I had a rude rep on the phone tell me it must have been something I installed/didn't install... which is bull. The short of it is, my computer went in for a total of 5 repairs... 3 new motherboards, 2 new harddrives. When I got it back from it's 5th repair, it blew up again within 4hrs. I'm now in the process of getting a new computer, but the one they've offered me is not, in my opinion, equal to the computer that I originally purchased. The representative called me on a Tuesday saying I had been approved, and explained part of the specs to me - but I was about to go to work, so when he asked if that sounded fine, I said "I guess, but can you call me back tomorrow to arrange everything because I have to go to work!" - tomorrow came... no phone calls. I called him at his direct line in Waco, Texas, and he never responded to my messages (and this was a 2nd level representative, not a first responder). So I called again, and went through another 2nd tier rep. He said that I didn't have a choice, that I already said that the laptop was fine, even though I wasn't completely told what I was getting. Left in a helpless situation, I decided to accept the new laptop anyways. So they arranged a Purolator pick up, and I sent it on it's way. So I called on Friday, and the first guy told me that my laptop had been repaired and was ready to be shipped, and I was like WTF? so I talked to a 2nd tier guy who got it sorted out, so he said, and said that he still had to email the repair center and get everything straightened out. So fine. So later that night, I check my email, and I get an email from the repair depot saying that they've shipped off my old laptop! So when I called in Monday morning, the guy, the same guy who never called me back a week prior, said that apparently the service request that had been put in was never cancelled and so the repair depot went to the oldest request number first and repaired it and shipped it off. So then when Fedex showed up at my door that day, I had to refuse the package. And now I remain waiting to get my new, or should I say, replacement refurbished laptop that isn't as good as the one that I originally bought, to show up at my doorstep.

So guess what? Last Tuesday, sick of all Acer's CRAP, I bought myself a nice, Duo Core 2GB Mem 250GB HD Compaq Laptop for $599 from Best Buy, with a 2 year warranty, and I will NEVER deal with Acer again. I'll sell the laptop that I'm getting back - whenever I get it back - to some poor schmuck who I feel sorry for, but nonetheless, will sell to because I need to pay off what I owe since I really couldn't afford to go out and buy a new laptop.

DO NOT EVER BUY ACER. Tell all your friends to never buy one. There is a better deal out there!

So guess what? Last Tuesday, sick of all Acer's CRAP, I bought myself a nice, Duo Core 2GB Mem 250GB HD Compaq Laptop for $599 from Best Buy, with a 2 year warranty, and I will NEVER deal with Acer again.

Hate to break it to you but you bought a laptop from Best Buy. I just hope you didn't get the in store warranty.

Guess what! Another laptop in the Acer family, Travelmate. Won't boot up, once in a while the bios screen comes up, but it won't load windows. Had a copy of Puppy Linux on my flash drive, and it booted up fine. I'll try to connect my hard drive externally and see if I can at least retrieve my data. Still no real answers to this solution. Arrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhh

Guess what! Another laptop in the Acer family, Travelmate. Won't boot up, once in a while the bios screen comes up, but it won't load windows. Had a copy of Puppy Linux on my flash drive, and it booted up fine. I'll try to connect my hard drive externally and see if I can at least retrieve my data. Still no real answers to this solution. Arrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhh

There is an answer, just not one you are willing to hear. Don't buy Acer.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, and I don't believe a study was done - but from my experience Acer has the worst track record for reliability. Extremely poor quality.

I couldn't power on my acer aspire either, tried everything I could think of, thought maybe the motherboard was bad.... I tried everything but the screen lock! It powed up and the fan came on and there were lights but no screen or sounds.... try fn/ scrLK (f12 on my acer) apparently my 4 year old is a techie in training!

Same to happen to mine. I took everything apart disconnected the BIOS battery and threw it away and after that it started

Finally a place where I can tell my story!

I have an Acer Aspire 3620 (AS3624WXMi), it was very well priced for a budget laptop, including a DVD+RW, and I later updated the memory to the max it supported (2GB DDR).

I acquired it on June 2006, in the U.S.A, and bring it to Costa Rica. In November 2007 something strange happened, the computer would boot up, but nothing appeared in the LCD screen, the backlight was on, but no image showing at all. A couple of resets and it was ready again.

Then on March 2008 the same happened again, only that this time the screen will display something only when it wanted... No deterministic way to make it work has occurred to me!

However, connecting an external monitor does still work, but it goes against the idea of a "portable" computer... So what I have now is a very light desktop computer with an integrated battery.

In the last two days I was unable to see the laptop to post, but typing the correct login and password let me to enter the graphical user interface (I'm using ArchLinux, this laptop boots in text mode, the login asks in console and then I manually enter to the GUI; Xorg).

But today that stopped to work too! I just simply put the laptop between the other computers, connected an ethernet cable to it, deactivated the support for the wireless card and make it play as a desktop remotely accessible using SSH.

Because of it's low power footprint, I will use it as an extra home server with an external USB drive and let my life go on without a laptop until the current trend of ultraportables (Eee, MSI Wind, HP 2133 and the others) produces something that appeals to me (I'm waiting for a VIA Nano powered ultraportable, the small companies deserve an opportunity! in black color, 10" to 11" screen, SATA hard drive, decent wireless support in Linux).

So, Acer is now blacklisted, I have the idea that a computer should last at least two and a half years, I think is a good timeframe to see where the technology is going and what one can expect to buy in the next cycle.

But this laptop lasted only about twenty months! What a waste! I know it was very affordable (Even more as a programming tool), but lasting so little makes it much more expensive!

I wouldn't recommend an Acer product to anybody.

Problems here too.. my advice, stay away from them, and if there is a support group for Acer victims, let me know!

freespirit

i have the exact same problem.
mine will randomly start at times, safe or normal boot. its obvious they installed a killswitch. the symptoms are EXACTLY THE SAME! it goes to black and continualy beeps.

I will never buy a ACER again and will recomend everyone does the same. i study mechatronics and a lecturer told me lots of companies do this. icant turn the thing off now because i cant afford another lappie, which is essential to an engineering student. and windows update REALLY wants me to restart.
its an aspire 2010

Hi from Holland.
Bought my Acer Travelmate TM2480 laptop in indonesia in december 2006.
for last few months i've also had the problem that computer won't turn on. started with one a week but now it's everyday! very frustrating.

strange thing is, my computer will usually turn on after a while of fiddling. and it will work fine untill i myself turn it off. usually after that it will turn on again immeadiately. laptop will usually have the symptoms in the morning or when it has been turned off for a while.

when only battery is inside -> no lights/no fan/no sound..won't turn on
battery & ac adapter -> no lights/no fan/no sound..won't turn on
only ac adapter -> no lights/no fan/no sound..won't turn on
as said, after some fiddling it will usually work.

does anyone also have these symptoms also: absolutely no sign of life, that the laptop will turn on in the end (miraculously, as if it were the work of god!) and work fine rest of the day? and next day same story?

very strange and frustrating and i think it's time for a new laptop. buying a new motherboard is expensive and waste of time since it's probably just as crap.

not really hoping to find a solution here, just thought i'd inform you of my symptoms

One more question.

I read about a hardware reset somewhere. By removing battery and ac adapter, and pressing the on/off button for 30 seconds resets something.

what exactly is reset and how does it work....

am not sure if this resetting really works for my laptop, but I always try it a few times.

Thank you Remichi. Worked like a charm. glad I found this forum. Also I had a problem recently where I couldn't boot up after installing SP1 for Vista.(Fan would go on and cursor would blink 3 times and then nothing) Acer and Microsoft were of no help at all. After a lot of trial and error I found that when I removed one of my RAM sticks (I had upgraded to 2X 2 GIG)it would boot up fine. Apparently when the laptop goes into hibernate mode it wouldn't come out of it with the full 4 gig loaded. Shutting down the laptop and then reinstalling the RAM stick it would boot up fine after that. Hope this helps.

Thank you Remichi. Worked like a charm. glad I found this forum. Also I had a problem recently where I couldn't boot up after installing SP1 for Vista.(Fan would go on and cursor would blink 3 times and then nothing) Acer and Microsoft were of no help at all. After a lot of trial and error I found that when I removed one of my RAM sticks (I had upgraded to 2X 2 GIG)it would boot up fine. Apparently when the laptop goes into hibernate mode it wouldn't come out of it with the full 4 gig loaded. Shutting down the laptop and then reinstalling the RAM stick it would boot up fine after that. Hope this helps.

I had a 1 year old aspire 5680 and it wouldn't turn on for the last 2 months. I did what you did and removed one of my ram sticks and IT TURNED ON! Thanks for the tip. It said that it couldn't get out of hibernation mode. But... the problem is now is that ever after i shut down the computer and put back the other ram stick, it won't turn on. Any idea what I can do?

Hi Everyone,

I have got same trouble with one acer aspire 1520 laptop : no access to the bios, black screen, fan running, green led on, etc...
One thing more, when clicking on the board I can ear a bip !

I have tried the clearmos stuff with no more luck !

Does anyone knows how to get the manual repair PDF for this acer ?

So at least I can try the Crocky solution without damaging parts !

Thank's
Mike

Hi all i have had an acer aspire one i think its like the a110 well its the new aspire one and my 1st one has the lights and fan sound and wouldnn't start so i got it replaced under warranty and got another brand new one and 10 days into that one it died and i am getting another one i was saying it was good but now i dont think so

Hello all, had same problem with my acer aspire 1691 bought Aug 2005, ie failing to start up, no bios screen, freezing randomley etc...

However I have managed to get mine working again...

I basically set about disconnecting various bits from the motherboard and seeing if it would start up. And hey presto after removing one of the ram memory cards from the motherboard it started up and has never failed to do so since! Its not a problem with the card itself as i tried it in the other slot and it worked fine. It's the slot itself that there is a problem with. My laptop is currently running with only one ram card in place; ok its a little slower than it should be, but for the most part it suits my needs!

I also reloaded windows xp, not sure if this had any positive effect or not, as i'm not very technically minded

Give it a go, I hope this works for some of you.

Sounds like the problem is where the AC Adapter plugs into the laptop. You see this a lot where they will break and not charge the battery or power the computer. If you are good with a soldiering iron you should be able to fix it your self.

Hello Everyone,

Found that my problem was coming from the nvidia video card Geforce FX Go5700.

In fact, trust me or not, after having disassembly the card I have heated it on both sides with an hairdryer ( this is less risky than Heatguns or ovens...)!

It seems crazy but today it's working !

Kind Regards
MCGeronimo

Maybe we can start class action lawsuit against Acer?

I find that most acers are unreliable. I had an Acer desktop eons ago, and it broke down soon enough. I know that many other computer technicians and experts hate acers. My advice is: avoid acers.

Well here is another sad story of an Acer laptop that died a month after warrenty was expired. I whole heartedly agree that a class action suit should be filed. I would sign up instantly.

the blinking lights look like a memory problem but it a new laptop. try checking if the memory on it is well but in place remember this laptop are manufacture in a fast built environment so is possible that they did but to memory on the primary slot 1 on is not but right.

Hello,

I am writing to find out just who is interested in a class action suit and who is not on many forums I have traveled to in the past 2 weeks trying to find out what is wrong with my Acer Aspire 5100. I have since discovered that it is a 60% chance that it is the Motherboard, and a 20% chance that it is the Graphics card, and a 20% chance that it is neither of those and is something else.

The problem with the "something else" is that it will cost me $60.00 $200.00 just to find out what the actual problem is. Then it will cost me another approx. $450.00 to fix it if it is either the Motherboard or the Grahics Card since the Graphics card is part of the motherboard which means the motherboard needs replacing either way. And of course since most all of the hardware components are integrated in the motherboard, that 20% chance of being something else is probably going to be something else on the motherboard anyways.

Age of Computer: 1.5 yrs. (purchased in Aug. 2007)

Symptoms: 1 long beep, 2 short beeps, does nothing else, will not boot up at all.

Actions Tried: Searched for almost 2 weeks straight to find hundreds of people have posted on the internet with the same or similar problems, many talking about joining a class action suit.

Put in a ticket to Acer: Responded with the -
pull out the battery, unplug the power cord, hold the power button down for 30 secs, plug the power cord back in, wait for boot up, put battery back in
This is what most of the posts on forums suggested so I had already tried it, but tried it again just for posterity.
This failed completely as it never booted up.

Acer's Suggestion: Send it in for repair at a cost of approx. $450.00 as it's most likely the motherboard that needs replacing.

PROBLEM: I spent $600.00 on this computer less than 2 years ago. I have read hundreds of posts on various forums that claim this exact problem as well as hundreds of posts with similar problems, all spanning dozens of Acer Notebook/Laptop models.

BIGGER PROBLEM: The posts mentioned above have stemmed all the way back to the year 2005!!

BIGGEST PROBLEM: Why are we having to pay for a machine problem that is obviously not user error or just a lemon part! This is an ongoing problem that Acer has not bothered to address to fix and those of us out of warrenty for a very short time are basically expected to forfeit not only the cost of the Laptop, but also expected to pay to repair an ongoing problem that shouldn't even still be there!

RESULTS:
I am looking to start a Class Action Suit against Acer for the above mentioned problems. I am not sure yet how to even go about this, nor do I have any information as to what will happen, could happen, or if it even CAN happen. I only know I am going to look into this matter and start one if at all possible if there is enough support (people also looking to do something about their loss of computer and money invested).

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP:
If you are one of the many who have been struck with any of the above problems mentioned or similar to it, then I want to hear from you and start some type of contact list so I have something to go on when I try talking with some lawyers to see what we can do.

Please email me with at least your name and a valid email. If you are uncomfortable giving your ISP or main email, feel free to open a new email account at Gmail, or Yahoo or Hotmail or wherever so we can correspond. I promise your information will go no farther than my contact list and my compilation of information for submitting to a lawyer for proof that there is probable cause for a Class Action Suit.

IF you are anyone that has any ideas on how to go about starting a Class Action suit I would also like to hear from you please. Feel free to email me so I can get this rolling A.S.A.P

My Name is Jo Ann Rice
My email is ****

Please do not spam me, as I'm sure I'll have enough email coming in for this not to have to deal with spam too 😛

Thank you for your time and please spread the word to any other sites or forums or people you are aware of having Acer problems similar to above.

NOTE: This would only be valid for those of us that are out of warranty, so please if you are still under warranty contact Acer and get it fixed! 😛

My notebook stops working just after 1 week of the warranty expired!!!!

Get on twitter and look me up @Arcticmatt. This problem is not just about those laptops out of warranty. Mine was in the repair shop 22 days and came back with exactly the same problem after they had replaced the motherboard 3 times!
I am going to hound this company until they fix their damn faulty machines and reimburse everyone for repairs, lost time and original equipment cost.

Same here. I bought an acer aspire 6935 a month ago.It worked fine until after a week the 3.5 jack broke.I took it for service and they replaced the motherboard.After that the startup problem began(black screen, ligths on, fans on).Not wanting to send it for service again, i contacted them by phone.They ignored me until i started shouting 😈 at them and their advise was to restore it to factory default and wait for a few days.I dont want to start taking the laptop apart,i just want it to work without prombles like HP, Sony and Dell laptops.But as i found out from this forum thats not going to happen.I just threw 1000 euros for nothing.Shame for Acer.Just cheap rubbish.
(Sorry for my English,i am from Greece.)

this is the problem due to the heat up the laptop. after heating the laptop and the ram may be get damaged . if the laptop got more heat than the problem should be the processor or the ram problem.
after damage the ram laptop or the computer will not start.

the problem should be in the motherboard and the ram only.because computer try to start up but unable to laod the windows so check the motherboard and the ram only .

after that try to check the processor and the power connections properly.

your motherboard is not working properly due to which when the computer starts up and try to load the windows but the motherboard does not work so that the windows not load and the computer shows the black screen. try to plug out and plug in of rams . so first check the ram and the IDE cables .

go to the bios setup and check the hard disk connectivity.

Hi there.
I'm a new member and i also have a Acer laptop with the dreaded boot up problem.
Model:Acer Travelmate 2450
Bios has the last one available from the Acer Website.
Symptom: Turn on, power light comes on, processor fan starts up hard drive light comes on, nothing there after.
I have stripped down this laptop 3 times now and for those of you that have the same symptoms i have stated then i might be able to help.

Firstly i can say the fault you have is to do with the motherboard.

I have played around with the motherboard touching various components and there is no signs of any damage to the motherboard, and no damage to any of the chips heat damage etc etc.

I have got this laptop to boot up after playing around with certain areas of the motherboard.

This particular model doesn't have a removable bios battery but if your model does then by all means remove this first.

Ok so your bios should be reset and the machine will boot up.

If not then you will have to do what i have done.
Remove the power supply lead and then remove the battery.
Remove the main panel which should reveal the processor fan and heatsink etc.
Remove the processor fan then the heatsink assembly, this model is using screws numbered from 1-6 to hold it in place, remove in reverse order starting with 6 then 5,4,3,2,1.
Push firmly on the Ati Graphics chip first (i also recommend removing the square piece or tape off the chip to prevent heat build up in future use).
Then do the same with the Processor Intel M on this model.

Refit the heatsink with the screw in the correct order, on this lappy doing this got this machine to boot up for the first time in 5 days bearing in mind that i had tried to boot up about 200 times previous.
So i would say my board deffinetly has a dry solder joint in that area.

Don't forget to clean out your fan and heatsink whilst they are removed.

To add i had got this machine to boot up after removing the battery without a power lead attached then just reconnecting the power lead, once booted then i would reconnect the battery.

Unfortunately this was a work around and no a fix so in the end i had to push on the graphics chip for which i think is the guilty party here.

Like others have mentioned here the machine wont boot if it can not detect the graphics chip, my betting as i have said before is a dry solder joint around this area.

Sorry for the essay but i hope i have helped shine some light on this annoying fault.

Sad thing is here i have 2 acer laptops in our household the other one being a Aspire 5315 which already is playing up with the stupid plastic mouse pad which is intermittant.
Bottom line... stay away from Acer.

I had the same problem but i fixed it ACER ASPIRE 4310 (Green Light OK, Fan OK, Power Meter OK, but BLACK SCREEN, not even the ACER screen) I just remove the battery and plugged the power supply and woila!! mAYbe it entered in safe mode, I dont know :s, just sharing my exprience

I found that fiddling with the power input plug while repeatedly slamming the litte power button works, but it usually takes 15 minutes.

ive been having the same problem, but mine only seems to work if i squeeze the bottom left and corner really hard, and then it boots on. if i let go of the corner it freezes in all sorts of weird lines.

Man, I swear I registered to this forum JUST to be able to thank the two people who posted the above two comments. They made me laugh for about 10 minutes straight. Had tears raining from the laughter.

I shouldn't be laughing cause as you might be able to tell from my username, my Acer Aspire 1680 died tonight.

Symptoms:

I click on power button, it lights up green
Green LED shows power and battery are working
I hear harddrive and fan start, then after about 3 seconds it all goes quiet.

I tried doing what people in this thread suggested, including the 30 second hold power button trick, it didnt work. I tried removing and swapping my 2 RAM modules, no luck.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and buy an external HDD enclosure for the HD and I pray to the Gods of Computers that the HD is still fine. I couldnt care less about the PC, the most important thing is the data I have on the HD, it's worth a lot more than the Laptop itself.

I bought a Asus just the other day, a Netbook EeePC for 400 bucks that's more powerful than this crappy Acer Aspire that I paid 1300 bucks for that died on me.

Maybe it got jealous.

Oh, and did I mention the Lightscribe DVD burner died on me months ago too?

Today I officiall join the Acer Haters Fanclub.

Oh, and if anyone has found a solution other than squeezing, fiddling or slamming components, please let me know.

Man...LOL still makes me laugh what people have posted in this thread.

My Acer Died

The solution from Acer is:

1. Remove Power cord
2. Remove Battery
3. Hold Power button down for 30 seconds(more like 3 minutes)

Replace battery and plug in AC and reboot.

I got the same problem with a Aspire 1650, sweet machine but now only good for a paper weight(might expensive one at that)!

That is the response I got.

My machine would power up and all and you can hear Windows XP loading in the background but nothing on the monitor, my first thought was the graphics chip(correct) but in order to repair it, you need to replace the mother board at 300.00 without labour and tax.

Here is another little bit of heads up...the preloaded software for the CD/DVD writer was only trialware!
Why would you install a CD/DVD with only trial software?
Like buying a car and finding out your keys no longer work because you didn't get a set of full version keys from the dealer at 10,000 every 2 yrs.

Anyways thinking about opening it up and putting in a new board meanwhile using an older laptop that cost me 450 and has been running for 4 yrs without a problem.

What's wrong with this picture...2 yr old laptop = trashed
4 yr old laptop = still keeps on running like the "Energizer Bunny" !

Hi all, greetings from Norway. This is my story (sorry for long post->2 acer laptops):

Acer Aspire 3000:
3 weeks after I purchased it, the fan started to make allot of noise. Except for the noise, it worked. Then when I checked the CPU fan later, I found that it was mounted on a small plastic thingy that had melted due to heat from the CPU. Also some dead pixels that started as 1, is now counting 20.
Since I had allot of cash this time, I purchased a new ACER with better specs (yeah, I know.. how stupid can I be?):

Acer Aspire 5520G:
Early symptoms: Webcam, mic and dvd-rom disappeared from device manager / bios. Took a while before I noticed this, as I don't use any of these often. It was working OK (some heat issues, but usually OK), so didn't use the warranty to fix this.

A couple of months after the warranty was expired, I could not boot to BIOS. Orange flashing power led. Tried the battery/ac steps, no change. Called Acer support and was met by a grumpy old hog, and I asked specifically not to get anything done before I had received a estimate of the job. 1 month later I got the laptop back with an invoice on 100$ for DUST CLEANING! I said no way, fuck you guys! I'm still waiting on a call for that invoice..

After the "dust cleaning" I was able to boot my computer again and it worked normal for 1 day, then, as many others in this thread; no access to the bios, black screen, fan running, green led on.. Searched google, and here I am..

As described earlier by others, when it boots normally, it works untill I shut it down. (read: works = at a random time the mouse and keyboard stop responding, and it seems the PC has frozen, but when pluggin in a usb keyboard and mouse, it's all good....)

Ahww.. Don't you all just love this <acer-feeling> 😉

Found this forum and couldn't belevie that most got the same problem.
My situation was even funnier, my acer Aspire's 5520 motherboard was replaced 3 times(could you believe that?) until eventualy warranty time finished and the damn thing is started to act in it's old way...
I found a solution to stop the screen blinking by puting peace of plastic under the cover(next too fan), but in some misterious way cd-rom disapeared( works as a coffe cup holder only..)

Hate damn acer

Another frustrated Acer user here.

I bought an Acer Extensa. Installed Linux.
It worked fine but about a month ago,it started acting very weird. When I turn the laptop on, everything works normally. But when I shut it down, it won´t start up again. No power, no sound, nothing. I unplug the power cable and plug it back many times. Nothing happens. It usually takes 2 to 7 hours till the power is on again. It is very very frustrating. I noticed that the problem begins after I got my internet. Could it be some conflicts with the hardwares? Shall I reinstall Ubuntu again?
Thanks!

I have an external link to an ACER Service manual for you lot but this forum won't let me post external links. Anyhow you'll find it at a site called, scribd dot com/doc/19072019/Acer-Aspire-16903510-Service-Manual

Replace the dot with a .

and don't forget the www

Hope it helps.

hi guys hope this helps I got a s/h aspire 1640 sometimes touch pad stopped working /wifi/keyboard etc all random checked hard drive memory no joy the fault was simple removed battery left it out computer worked without a fault ordered new battery from hk 27 euros run perfect
regards mike

Same thing happened to my Aspire One netbook. One night it just froze on me and when I restarted the fan and power lights came on but nothing on the monitor. I ran through all the tests with an Acer tech over the phone but none of them worked so I mailed in to get fixed. A few days later they said they wouldn't fix it because the shift key had fallen off and they don't partial repairs. So now I'm thinking about just buying a lenovo ideapad for about $130 less than I paid for this Acer, since most likely it seems like the motherboard fried. And from everything I've read, fixing the motherboard will cost at least 150.

I have an acer extensa 4620-4605. I like it very much. Vista machine. Several weeks ago, it kept shutting down on its own. The event viewer said someting about could not start parallel port. Found a like to change something in the registry. Anyway, it seemed fixed for a while. Then it would not boot at all. Reloaded windows and it was fine until yesterday. It would not boot clear up. It went so far, went to a screen to repair windowns or start nornally. It would not do either. So I tried to reload windows. It would load the files, and then quit. So I loaded dos 6.2, reformatted the drive and it works just fine in DOS. Then I tried to reload windows and nothing changed. It would not take the 2nd disk of the two disk set. I tried to load windows 98, 2000, xp and they all gave the message of non-system disk. So I tried to restore from the factory disks again and it would not finish loading files before it bombed out. I loaded dos to test the disk. It seems fine. Do these machines have some sort of heat problems/ The rebooting on its own seemed to start after it had been on for a long time and it seemed to be cured after it was shut off 3 hours

I was given an acer aspire 1520 and after a few months the screen went black, and I could get no visuals from it at all. I also got nothing from plugging an external monitor.

after looking for an nVidia GeForce GO 5700 on ebay for year and a bit (the graphics are on a separate 2" square board" I came across a french website, and apparently, a common fault with that board is a solder joint popping loose.

The solution was the weirdest I had ever heard of. put the graphics card in the oven at 150 degrees for 3 minutes. I thought "I've got nothing to loose". when I plugged it all back in again, the screen was all white. Progress!!! it was all whit because I hadn't pushed the inverter connection in properly. I did that and now have a perfectly working laptop again.

And if it goes wrong again, back to the oven!

For all those who were not able to solve acer startup problems, i have tried just about everything, flashing bios to startup disc to pushing and shoving the bloody thing around as was mentioned on other forums.

as a 48 year old woman with no technical background or education, i opened up the laptop,(why not the thing did not work anyway) tried all the obvious connections, and afters lots of trying i found out the little bios battery came lose at the slightest touch, i simply got some sticky tape and stuck it on the top of the bios bettery and it still works ....

We have an Acer that isn't even 6 months old and it is doing this same thing. Except I get five flashes from my battery lcd. Comes on then shuts down immediately. Mostly only staying on for up to two seconds. I don't even get to see my BIOS splash screen. I've sent it of to Miami for a so-called specialist to look at the MB. He says there's nothing wrong with it, I think otherwise. Hell, if the HD was in bad shape, it would at least get passed the BIOS screen! Anyone figure out this problem to find a solution? I totally agree, I regret ever buying this Acer.

My Acer has started to play up a bit recently. The occiasional random turning off is a bit irriting despite the computer being plugged into the wall and the batter aparently charging.

I noticed issues with the computer when i first got it, but i didn't think alot of it because at the time i was travelling Australia (where i bought the machine from). It wasn't until i got back to Scotland and started using it more that the issues started arising. First it was the sound, then the actual running performance. Then several other issues that have come and gone since.

The random turning off seems to be happening more frequently. I fully expect it to stop working within the next year or so as the machine is about 2 years old now.

I was a diehard laptop fan until i got this comp. I am more into PC's nowadays as you get alot more for your money and you know that if something does decide to go on it you can replace it without much problems.

Do not buy an Acer.

Just joined this forum to share my sucsess in getting my Acer to work. Really hope it works for you.

Just bought a used Acer Aspire 5003 for parts or repair for a good price. When I tried to start it I got the symptoms that everyone here knows all to well. I tried everything listed here with no luck.

I fixed this laptop by first reseating the ram making sure it was seated correctly. This got me as far as the Acer screen upon boot up but would still shut off on its own.

After further inspection i noticed that i could get a extra turn on the screws holding down the heat sink and the cpu. Tightened the screws down and the computer worked great ever since.

I know this wont work for everyone but its another thing to add to the list of things to try. This might explain pressing on the case at the bottom left hand corner that has worked for some other people. So double checking the ram, tightening the heat sink down or even reseating the cpu may work for you.Your cpu may not be seating properly and not getting a good connection

Best of luck everyone.

Just joined this forum to share my sucsess in getting my Acer to work. Really hope it works for you.

Just bought a used Acer Aspire 5003 for parts or repair for a good price. When I tried to start it I got the symptoms that everyone here knows all to well. I tried everything listed here with no luck.

I fixed this laptop by first reseating the ram making sure it was seated correctly. This got me as far as the Acer screen upon boot up but would still shut off on its own.

After further inspection i noticed that i could get a extra turn on the screws holding down the heat sink and the cpu. Tightened the screws down and the computer worked great ever since.

I know this wont work for everyone but its another thing to add to the list of things to try. This might explain pressing on the case at the bottom left hand corner that has worked for some other people. So double checking the ram, tightening the heat sink down or even reseating the cpu may work for you.Your cpu may not be seating properly and not getting a good connection

Best of luck everyone.

Will try this when I get my laptop back from Miami, if it''s not fixed yet! Thanks.

Further inspection of my acer 7520 it now appears the the bios battery underneath the type board, is slightly lose, i stuck it down with sticky tape and it works ever since, for those where the acer doen not even pass the bios that might work

You know, it's cool that we're finding ways to make these laptops going, but the messed up part about it all is that they shouldn't even be taking a dump in the first place! I will NEVER EVER EVAR BUY ANOTHER ACER EVER AGAIN!I oughtta get this sucker going and sell it. Go buy me a real laptop for the money I paid for this one!

Try this !!! Remove your back cover where the ram is located. You should see a silver heat sink which is for your gpu. Try applying pressure on this, not enough to break anything and start your computer with the pressure still applied. Ive seen these symptoms a few times now and this is most likely your problem. The thermal pad is damaged, no good or is not contacting your gpu correctly.

Im not making any promises here but its been working for me with my friends computers who have had similar problems. It would make sense that if the gpu (Graphics processing unit)is overheating there would but be no image but the computer could still start.

Location of the gpu may vary from model to model but it should not be hard to find.

Give it a try and let me know your results. I want all your laptops to work again ! Im not gonna get my hopes up cause all in all they are all still Acers lol. I will be posting any other possible causes and or fixes that i come across. Best of luck

I got an Acer Aspire 6935 a couple months back. I was having the same exact issues as most of you on here. First my battery went completely bad within a month of buying it. Then my computer would sometimes turn on and sometimes I could here it booting up and the fan running but just a blank screen without me being able to press F8 or F10 or whatever to start safe mode. I ordered a new battery, put it in and it immediately crashed my computer saying "fatal error" or something like that. The computer would work on and off for about a month after that but then it finally wouldn't turn on at all, just the booting noise with a black screen.

I took the advice of someone on this forum and unplugged the BIOS battery and plugged it back in. It worked! My brother who is in IT said he would suggest buying a new BIOS battery as a backup in case it is shorting out somehow. Anyway, I hope this information can be helpful to others facing the same problem that I was.

I am going to trawl my way through this thread. I have been reading this on and off for a long time now as i own an ACER Laptop and started having issues quite early on.

Tonight i have booted it up only for it to turn off after a couple of minutes. 3 times in a row and that has happened.

It was doing it periodically for a few weeks now and now it is constant. So i fully expect to turn it on one time and for it not to do anything.

I have also noticed that lately the battery life has dropped significantly.

This is why I go with and trust HP Laptops/Computers.

I've worked my Acer hard for two and a half years and it has recently started to shut down occasionally (like some of the other comments in this thread). It's also been running very hot, and I thought that was due to me having too many applications running etc.
It just did it again this morning and I decided to check out the inside for dust around the heat sink / fan area.

Bingo! ....a wedge of dust which looked like felt.

So the morel of my story, is clean out the inside of your laptop, also check for loose screws which could cause a short (I found one which was almost out).... Then see if you still have problems with unscheduled shut downs.

One other comment... Early on after I bought my Acer I was really unhappy with it (but that was actually due to two things - One, other people telling me that Acer was crap and that I should have bought an HP, plus Vista which made my new Acer run slower than my 6 year old Dell). I had some other problems which were really software related, and when I went back to the shop to take mine back, all I saw there were other people bringing in their HPs to be fixed.

A light went on in my head.

My wife's had problems three times with her Dell.

My conclusion to all this is that no one manufacturer is any better than any other, and to simply write off one brand of computer is not that sensible, unless you've had a number of these which have all given problems.

I run my Acer really hard, and actually it's been OK on the whole. Yes there are things I would prefer, but it's all cost related... You get what you pay for.

Norman 😕

I run my Acer really hard, and actually it's been OK on the whole. Yes there are things I would prefer, but it's all cost related... You get what you pay for.

Completely agree. The thing that bugs me is when i bought my laptop i was in Australia doing a 5 month working holiday. The laptop was handy for keeping in touch with people back home in Scotland. I never really used it to the point i do now until i got back home, it was then that things started to play up. One of the things was the volume scroll thing on the left of the laptop basically made no difference to the volume, it would only go up and down one or two notches so in order to adjust the temperature i would have to do it via the speaker icon next to time/date. A bit of an inconvenience but something i could live with.

The CD/DVD drive also played up quite early on, it wouldn't recognise disks or anything. That problem solved it self over time but not without many frustrating moments. Now the computer appears to be overheating which is what i believe is causing the computer to shut down unexpectedly. I do admit there are times i may sit the computer on the carpet for a small while and there may not be sufficient cool air getting to the body...however that is not always the case and it still shuts down. I actually don't think the fan is nearly good enough for the actual computer anyway, so i don't suppose that is helping when it comes to cooling the machine down either.

Yeah... it's hard to tell if these problems are hardware or software related. I know that Vista put a lot more strain on the processor than XP and intitially I blamed the computer... After upgrading my RAM to 4Mb it performed a lot better. I can't comment on Windows 7.

My DVD drive has the irritating habit of not being able to play or write a disc if my computer has been in stand-by mode... I have to re-boot each time I wish to use it.

An update on cleaning the fluff out of the head-sink fan area... This has made a BIG difference. The computer runs much quieter now and hasn't had any premature shutdowns since cleaning.

😁 Just remember to make regular back-ups, cos sooner or later the hard drive will fail.

Norman

Acer fails. Hp is awesome along with Dell and Toshiba. I've used all of these computers and they run great. Lots of fun features and great functionality. Dell provides awesome customization. HP offer great great prices for their laptops, and Toshiba is great in performance and productivity. As for Acer -__-..... it sucks. I never met such a computer with so many problems. It's actually more crap than my 13 year old Compaq Presario 5000 -.-! Yes this computer is old <_< but thank fully it runs great now with some few minor adjustments 😁 !!

Old Specs
Cpu:900 MHz (--)
RAM:64 MB (..)
VIDEO RAM:4 MB (-_____-!!)
OS:Windows Millenium (FUCK MY LIFE <<)

New Specs 😁
CPU:1GHz
RAM:320 MB
Video RAM:8 MB (lmfao 4mb more xD)
OS: Windows XP Professional (FUCK YES!!!! >:D)

Now it runs much better 😁 .

But back on topic.

Ditch your ACER!!! and go for a new laptop that you can now get for the same price and it'll be 10x better!

Best of Luck to all because at the beginning of this thread I actually had some suggestions but all of them got ruled out when you guys formed a "FUCK YOU ACER" mob.... I was like never mind, must read on.

I read and I've come to the same conclusion, it is faulty motherboard connections on ACER's behalf. So yea >_>... no one knows if this was done on purpose so you'd be forced to buy a new laptop.

But as of now, proudly raise your hand, raise your middle finger up and shout insanely outside your window "FUCK ACER!" and let the world know your agony.

With that I'm off. Sorry if I didn't help but if your stuck with a shit laptop and you don't get what you paid for.... by all means punch the person next to you and say that you blame ACER.

Edit: rofl I had no idea the forum auto censors profanity. My bad I'm new here xD!! "if your stuck with a plum laptop" I literally lol'ed o.o

Try this !!! Remove your back cover where the ram is located. You should see a silver heat sink which is for your gpu. Try applying pressure on this, not enough to break anything and start your computer with the pressure still applied. Ive seen these symptoms a few times now and this is most likely your problem. The thermal pad is damaged, no good or is not contacting your gpu correctly.

Im not making any promises here but its been working for me with my friends computers who have had similar problems. It would make sense that if the gpu (Graphics processing unit)is overheating there would but be no image but the computer could still start.

Location of the gpu may vary from model to model but it should not be hard to find.

Give it a try and let me know your results. I want all your laptops to work again ! Im not gonna get my hopes up cause all in all they are all still Acers lol. I will be posting any other possible causes and or fixes that i come across. Best of luck

it seems it is my problem as well. when I press down the heat sink on the processor it starts up.
thanks! but my question is then can you replace only the heat sink part? because this is only a temporarty solution, sometimes it still doesnt want to start but after pressing down again it starts.
Did yours work perfectly after yu did that?

hi folks, was searching for Toshiba m35 not booting issue, and found this same thing on an Acer...just proves the point that basically any laptop is of same quality regardless of brand. I owned a dozen sofar, had a Compaq, few HPs, Toshiba m35, IBM, now own an Acer 7720Z, quite satisified with the build quality and all... Anyway, back to the problem at hand.
Had my Toshiba m35, acted up for a while, then decided to totally die. Each time I powered on, LEDs would flash, Fan would spin for a second and then everything shut down again. I found that the motherboard is faulty, and found a fix for it. Wrote up an illustrated tutorial for it, hundreds of Toshiba and HP owners saved their laptops... maybe it will help with the Acer issue... worth to try. The trick is to resolder the Maxim power driver. Full description of the resolder technique is in the tutorial, hope this helps anyone out there
Just google for "Toshiba m35 motherboard repair imateski"

Registered just to share my answers.
I removed the top stick of ram and away she went. Aspire 5270. This after weeks of scrambled harddrive and no booting.
Memory is ok, its the top slot thats defective. This laptop will be getting a single stick 2 gig ram and hopefully will run for a long time.
My own laptop is an aspire 4720 and has almost been flawless. 2 yrs old now. Early on I had a wireless card go and replaced it with another from ebay, other than that its been good. Would for sure buy another

Hi All,

(Read on as I can get this machine to work - but don't know why!!)

I was given an Acer Aspire 1694 to look at which is having very similar problems to those described here:

1. The machine will boot up and will load windows without any issues, but without display.

2. I think that it will also boot into the BIOS settings as well (from looking at the hard disk activity compared to a normal windows load), but again there is no display so I cannot be sure.

3. Watching closely, I noted that the screen would activate (change from dead to lit black) and I also glimpsed a white cursor in top left corner from time to time. I also noted on some boots, you would actually get a flash of the Acer start-up screen (but that was only after lots of fiddling around). So the screen was working.

My attempts to fix have been:

1. I stripped the machine down and removed: HD, Wireless, RAM, Screen connector, CMOS battery, Processor and Proc Fan connector, Keyboard.

2. I replaced RAM as I had some spare - No change

3. I tried to boot to other OS such as Ubuntu _ No display.

4. I tried to boot to external monitor - This was the same as the laptop - On but black.

5. I tried to use external USB keyboard for testing external monitor - No change.

6. I tried various pressure points and key combinations as suggested here - No change

None of this worked. The end result was always that the machine will boot and the screen will remain alive but black.

In the end I just randomly pressed lots of keys in a complete random jumble - and can you believe it, the machine lit up and there was the windows desktop! I repeated this a few times and each time the machine would boot to a black screen, but then with a minute of mass random key pressing the screen would again light up and the desktop would be visible again.

I then tested putting the machine into suspend and back out again, and the graphics continued to work.

To further test, I again removed the keyboard and whilst the keyboard was connected but in mid air, I re-booted. Again the black screen. Again though, a mass random pressing of keys and the graphics work again. This eliminated that it might be pressure on something under the keyboard (and not the mass keyboard pressing actions) that was causing it to work.

I also tested with a USB keyboard, and sure enough, mass key pressing on the USB keyboard has the same result.

So my short term fix for the owner of this machine is that they will just need to keep it in suspend mode until the machine finally dies or they decide to buy another machine or pay for a more professional repair service.

I am not sure if this information will help anyone else, or better still, spark some other ideas as to what could be causing the issue. I personally think that this is purely an issue with the graphics card and that maybe the action of pressing all the keys opens something on the desktop that maybe uses the ATI drivers which communicate with the graphics card, causing something to function, but I am sort of guessing 🙂

Hope that helps.

Mark.

I follwed the following steps at acer support page

"
What do I do when my notebook or netbook does not power on?

Please follow the steps below to attempt restoring power to the system.

1. Disconnect the AC adapter from the laptop.
2. Remove the battery.
3. Press and hold the power button for about 30 seconds then release it. (You will not see anything happen)
4. Connect the AC Adapter to the laptop. Make sure the AC Adapter is plugged in.
5. Turn the computer on as normal.
6. Once Windows loads, insert the battery
   "

and I was able to get my acer aspire 5735z up and running again.
may it helps someone else too.

Chintubrass,

I did try this as well, but the problem that I am having is not that the machine will not start. It starts up and will load Windows without any problem. It just does not display anything on the screen. I know that the screen is working and pressing enough random keys all at the same time will cause the screen to spring into life....

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Mark.

Hello. Just like half an hour ago or so, my Acer Aspire 5520 ran into a very similar problem, if not the same.

It was running perfectly as it did for 2 and a half years, I wasn't even running a game or some big chunk of software (only winamp, xfire and firefox 3) but suddenly it turned itself off. When I try to run it power lights, I wait a little, fan's running, I hear it reading the DVD, then suddenly power is cut. I can see no flash of light on the screen during this time.

Get this; when it shuts itself down, it immediately powers itself up again, trying to start up and doing to process I mentioned above again, shutting itself down, etc. In the end it constantly fails at starting up and I just watch it fail miserably.

It might be related to the screen; I haven't tried to plug in an external screen. Might be motherboard or something else, in which case I'm doomed since I don't think I'm able to afford a good lappy these days.

Hi, last night my Acer laptop had the same problem,
it suddenly turned itself off and it wont start. When I try ,the lights turn from yellow to green, fan's running, and nothing happens on my screen, its just black and blank

Its so annoying!

hope somebody will help me with this

go to the support page. submit a question. i just did it and my problem was resolved. my computer would not start at all. teh fan and hard drive would spin. i got sent a link and put a file on a flash drive, put it in the acer and started it. and within 10 minutes it was working again. (needed to flash the bios)

google "How do I update the BIOS on my ,Acer Aspire One AOA110 or AOA150 netbook?" and it should be the first link.

Thankyou Jason219, will try.

Acer 5610Z would appear to come on briefly (heard fans and power light would come on) but it would shut off before the bios even booted. We reseated the wireless card and it appears to be working again.

Hello Falanca,

Any Update on your problem what have you done?

Cheers,
SG

Hello. Just like half an hour ago or so, my Acer Aspire 5520 ran into a very similar problem, if not the same.

It was running perfectly as it did for 2 and a half years, I wasn't even running a game or some big chunk of software (only winamp, xfire and firefox 3) but suddenly it turned itself off. When I try to run it power lights, I wait a little, fan's running, I hear it reading the DVD, then suddenly power is cut. I can see no flash of light on the screen during this time.

Get this; when it shuts itself down, it immediately powers itself up again, trying to start up and doing to process I mentioned above again, shutting itself down, etc. In the end it constantly fails at starting up and I just watch it fail miserably.

It might be related to the screen; I haven't tried to plug in an external screen. Might be motherboard or something else, in which case I'm doomed since I don't think I'm able to afford a good lappy these days.

No Power Up Fixed. First take out battery and remove power source. Open ram cover and take out ONE of the ram cards. Then try plugging in the power source and rebooting. Try this with each RAM card. One of the RAM card ports or cards is most likely bad. You may have experienced a slow-down of speed recently, extreemly hot on the bottom, email taking longer to load. Not only should this fix the problem but it should help your speed slightly. Best of luck.

Just wanted to say. Friends laptop same symptons. Power seemed to be getting to the laptop, but back screen on startup, not going to bios etc.

Followed the advice of poster above, took top ram out. Started first time. Rebooted 5 times now to test. Works fine.

Hey folks a quick note on how i fixed my issue.

My friend has a Acer Aspire 5534 that i agreed to take a look at after it would not fully boot.

They dropped it off and it booted right up for me but i held it to look at it further, i knew they haven't started it in a while and if it was a cmos battery or something like that i could wait for it to charge and try to reproduce the problem.

Which i was, i didn't suffer the all black screen like most but im assuming my issue was semi related, i was able to get video on the screen however when i was able to reproduce the issue. All i got was the Acer logo and "Press F2 to enter Setup"

It just sat there and hung. Even after it would hang i could still have F2 and it would say "Please wait..." but nothing ever came of it.

I tried a few things listed on these 10 pages of posts a combination or a single one of these "fixed" my issue.

-Broke down the laptop tested all the connections and blew out the dust

-Unplugged the battery and AC cord held down the power button for at least 2 mins
pulled out one of the memory chips (however they are both fine and are reading when I was finally able to boot into windows)

-When i finally got in the Aspire 5534 was on bios ver. 1.10 the latest was 1.16. So i updated the bios and it booted right up. I even realized some of the issues that it was showing early on like phantom icons in the task bar were fixed.

Its booted ever since, i'll cross my fingers for them.

Another disgruntled ACER user...

I found this site after searching for a solution to my problem.
Again I have a problem at start up like most of the posters on this post.

I press the power key on my Acer and the laptop starts to power up. I have a green LED light on the hard disk to show power to the HDD and the num-lock key lights up. I can hear the fan start and the HDD whirring away as if Windows is loading in the background but the LCD down not power up and the start up gets no further. I have left the laptop sitting like this for over half an hour and nothing.

Pressing the num-lock key does not switch of the num-lock light and pressing the caps-lock key does not illuminate the caps-lock light either. The laptop has locked up and nothing further can be done.

I can switch off the laptop by holding down the power key for 7 seconds and everything powers off.
I press the power key again and the same thing... same rigmarole as it goes round and round...

Then I (I say I but the wife says she found the work round 😁 ) came across a solution where after the initial start up power down, by holding the power switch for 7 seconds, if I press the power switch and hold it down for 4 seconds and then let go the laptop powers up and windows starts to load normally. Once loaded the laptop works fine until the laptop is shutdown or rebooted and then the same issue as before on starting.

This works each and every time. This would suggest that it's not a hardware fault and software related or is a hardware fault but the BIOS check is by passed by holding the power switch down for 4 seconds. I only read about removing the RAM so I am going to test this tonight but does this work for anyone else experiencing the problem?

Did this problem ever get solved for anyone?

i have a Acer Aspire 5520G laptop

i think ive had it for about 3 years,

just lately i have also had problems starting or booting it,

like the rest here my screen stays black, cpu fan is turning

but it wont boot,

tried the external monitor thing tried reseating everything,

sometimes it will boot and when it does it works fine the only problem i have is i have to leave the laptop on 24/7

surely if this was a hardware issue then it would crash or something??

ive contacted acer they just want me to send the laptop to them with an initial charge of 55 euros or something, which i wont do..

Someone named Asim contacted me and let me know that they resolved this:

I fixed my issue by replacing the BIOS battery. When the PC/Laptop became more than 3 years old, it's BIOS battery usually needs replacement. So please try this method too while swapping RAMs, checking heat sinks, BIOS reset, etc. Acer isn't a bad laptop. Instead if I think about the money I spent, I get much better laptop than others.

So basically you might want to double check that you have replaced the lithium battery on the motherboard, as that may also resolve your problem.

Hi

I have an Acer Aspire 9423WSMi laptop with 160GB HD and 2 GB of memory running Vista Home Premium. I have had it for 4 years without any problems so I suppose that I have done well after reading the reports on here.

About a month ago I had problems with the display and soon tracked it down to a faulty LCD and I obtained a replacement, installed it and it was fine.

A few days ago, it would not start up correctly. The display just showed coloured vertical lines. I re-booted and it stated OK. The following morning again it would not start but the display was black except for the dim backlight. I attached it to my TV and again all that was visible were coloured vertical lines and rolling patterns and the bottom line showing the screen resolution and refresh rate.
The laptop display was black with no backlight which still comes on only when the external monitor is disconnected.

On attempted start-up the HD LED flashes and flickers and the DVD LED also briefly flashes. You can hear the access of the HD but the fan at the right side does not operate and it did. The Wifi LED lights up fairly quickly. The laptop does not go into POST and non of the keys enable you to get into the BIOS.

As suggested on here, I have dis-connected the memory modules, hard drive and tried to perform a hard re-set (press power button for 1 min). Natually, I have tried with and without battery and mains adapter and also tried my adapter from this Acer 5750.

I just can't think of anything else. I don't have my original factory default disks here as I live in Spain and I am in Leeds UK at my house, at present. I also have a USB to hard drive adapter cable in Spain and I could try to access the DH. I am not going back for a couple of months yet. I really need to get to my letters and SS on my older acer. Of course, it backs up the d drive partition which is of no use. In Spain, I did a full image to my external 1.5 TB HD before I left, so all is not lost when I return.
I really would like to get this laptop going.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Any links to service manuals for the 9420 Series might help. I wondered if it could be the CMOS battery but i don't know where it is??

Thanks

Nigel

Hi again

Added info:

I've just had another look and the fan does start when the power button is pressed but it only stays on for a couple of seconds.

Any help?

Thanks

Nigel

already solved the problem?

Hi
No, its not sorted. I have taken the hard drive out and it's fine. I have it in a USB dock and have read my files and copied them onto my new Acer.

I would love to get the old one working.

I think its probably the graphics card but I dont know if that is integrated on the motherboard.

Thanks

Nigel

sounds like the computer is a paperwieght, have u tried flashing the BIOS or using an external keyboard to enter the BIOS?

I got the answer to your problem.

I ran in to this and dont know if you guys found the problem but I had an acer for years, and if you own a acer this becomes common, and it is easy to fix as it will happen sevral times wile you own and acer you will need to get used to this process of fixing it, I read some of the posting I noticed that the majority was the black screen and no boot, green light and battery light on, and some others that where a bit diffrent problem that where not easy to fix,

well enaough said, know to fix the black screen no boot, I would explane but think if you see it done on youtube will be easy to do it, so here is the link, let me know if this helped, good luck.

search on youtube for this, it will be lowendgurru and you got the right one

01 How to fix the Acer Aspire One black screen problem - flash the BIOS

Hello

Thanks for taking the time to reply and I have watched the video. It certainly is worth a try. I was thinking that the problem was with the video card but it makes sense that it could be a corrupted bios as it doesnt even try to boot up. At present it is behind the chair doing nothing(I had to buy a new computer) so I have nothing to loose.

Many thanks and I will let you know.

Nigel in Spain.

Hi again

Tried the method but nothing. I tried different USB flash drives but couldn't get it to flash the bios. Nothing on screen or attached TV.

Guess it must be the display card.

Many thanks for trying

Nigel

I have an Acer TM 6292 which has been giving me the horrors as described in most of the previous posts. It is now 6 years old and it has been my workhorse, so I cannot really complain too much. I got it because I had (and still have) an Acer TM 4220 series which worked so well it encouraged me to get the 6292. It gave none of the problems described. However, the 6292 is a horse of a different colour. It is so unpredictable. When it starts to work, it works well but I do not dare put it to 'hibernate' and even 'sleep' is risky. I have replaced the hard drive, changed from XP to '7', increased the RAM and most recently done a reformat. The fan starts to run almost as soon as it is switched on and keeps cutting in and out. Now and then a program will 'hand up'. I am going to replace the Acer and use it for experiments or whatever. I hope all of you find some kind of a solution with your problems. Acer flattered me to deceive. I will use another brand. I wish you all a HAPPY PROBLEM-FREE 2014, probably best to stay away from Acer.

Thanks YZMAN ... Its working .. Thanks a lot