Won't Turn On - Won't Charge - Acer 5740

[SunBreeze]

Eugh, hasn't been a good month for me, it seems like I keep finding hidden issues.

I have a customer with an Acer 5740 laptop (i5 Model). She brought it in for a clean up. I ended up finding viruses on it and a lot of bloatware so we agreed on a reinstall of Windows. I used the recovery partition (Windows 7).

I returned the laptop to her in working order last night and was alerted today by her that it had frozen. I told her to hold the power button down to do a force shutdown. She then let me know that it had since frozen again and just turned off and she couldn't turn it back on.

So she brought it into me again and I plugged it in and tried turing it on. Not only did it not turn on but the charging light (the power button is full blue when it is on and a dimmed blue when charging) was not even on. I tested the charger with a multimeter, it is working fine, I checked the battery socket, it is putting out a small amount of current (not sure if it is usual) and I checked the battery and it still has current.

I can't get it to turn on, from a Windows re-install to this!

Any suggestions?

 

[NYJimbo]

First thing is to reseat the ram (test with known good ram if you can). I know you didn't go in there but do it, you would be amazed how many times that's it. After that you can try reseat easy access cables (keyboard, touchpad, etc). Remove DVD drive and HD and see if it boots. Of course do the BIOS flush routine if you have not already.

These are all standard diags for testing a dead laptop and if you haven't done them already you need to work on your diag skills.

Be sure you test with a known good charger, doesn't matter if you see power with the customers charger. Test with and without battery.

If none of the above helps then you are likely looking at a thermal issue. One thing I always do once I get a laptop stable is to install HWMonitor or Speccy and see what the thermal ranges are. If they are too high I will not do extensive scans, chkdsk, sfc, updates, etc until the thermal issue is addressed.

If the motherboard is cooked then you are in a hard place, not sure how you will handle that with your customer.

Always be sure to run a thermal checkup on laptops, especially now in the warmer time of the year.

 

[brandonkick]

Jimbo hit a lot of it on the head.

Just because her charger is showing the proper voltages (check the brick to be sure it's the right amount), doesn't mean it will work properly when loaded.

I've even metered a power supply under load, and even though it was showing good voltages it STILL turned out to be the issue.

Try booting the machine without the battery (and everything from the usb ports and so on) and the power adapter plugged in.

Try booting the machine with only the battery plugged in and not the ac adapter.

And do the things Jimbo stated.

 

[SilverLeaf]

Be sure you test with a known good charger, doesn't matter if you see power with the customers charger. Test with and without battery.

FWIW. I had the same problem with a similar model recently and it turned out to be a defective battery (original Acer battery). It ran fine without the battery. With the battery, I was lucky to get it to even boot, let alone run for more than a few minutes before locking up solid. I also noticed that the battery produced an unusual amount of heat while in use. So definitely follow NYJimbo's recommendation, and test with and without the battery.

 

[SunBreeze]

One of the first things I tried was trying it with out the battery and with the power supply in and vice versa.

I will try reseating the RAM and removing other components, but the charger light on the laptop isn't even lighting up which is why I didn't think RAM would do something like that, I'll still try it.

I'll let you know what I find.

 

[SunBreeze]

Just disassembled the laptop and put it back together again (also reset the CMOS battery) and still nothing, I'm going to call the customer and let them know it's a dead motherboard.

 

[brandonkick]

Just disassembled the laptop and put it back together again (also reset the CMOS battery) and still nothing, I'm going to call the customer and let them know it's a dead motherboard.

You did test the laptop at various different stages correct? Not just strip it down, reassemble it and then test it? It's really important that you tested it with the bare minimal components (in this case a stick of memory). So if you have not tested just the bare motherboard then you can't be sure that it's bad.

 

[SunBreeze]

You did test the laptop at various different stages correct? Not just strip it down, reassemble it and then test it? It's really important that you tested it with the bare minimal components (in this case a stick of memory). So if you have not tested just the bare motherboard then you can't be sure that it's bad.

Yes I did. The customer was okay with it though, it just sucks that it had to happen just after I looked at it!