Acer Laptop boot trouble

I have an Acernote nuovo in my shop that will not boot. What happened is, it came in for a system restore while I was gone (this weekend) and my boss ( who is also a tech ) did the restore and it worked fine. He's just a part time sort of tech ( he's really good with some things ) and so was going to leave the drives for me to load as apparently he couldn't get them all to work. The customer came in and that's what he told them. He went to show them that he did the restore but some drivers weren't working and it wouldn't boot. First of all it has no power switch it just turns on when you open the case. Second apparently the only way to shut it off is to pull the battery. Now what happens is you open the case the light comes on and nothing, no screen ouput nothing. You can hear that it's running but it doesn't really sound like the hd is spinning. I thought maybe it's in a sleep mode of some type but it won't wake up! Any ideas? I know it may be a dead machine but my boss is kind of desperate. Any ideas would be appreciated.

GLSmith

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I still haven't had any luck with this one and now I have a second acernote ( this ones a light ) with the same problem. I am going to try and contact acer but they are both off warranty so who knows.

GLSmith


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I don't have much to go on here as I have not worked on that particular model. Maybe you could try hooking up a regular monitor in case there is a display problem. Also you might want to try hooking the hd's up to a known working machine.preferably not another laptop,to see if they are funtioning properly.(Hope they remove easily) You could also try disconnecting any device you can to see if it will boot (foppy cd-rom ect). Also some laptops the powerlight seems to come on but the laptop won't boot unless you hold the power button down for a few extra seconds.

[This message has been edited by Crowbar (edited February 21, 2001).]

Could be a symptom of a failing CMOS battery!
Laptops are notorious for not letting you define your own CMOS HD definitions in the BIOS, so if lost, and auto detect is not on by default, then problems can occur.
Or check the HD leads/connections, they can fail due to internal laptop case heat excesses/extremes over time.

Rudders https://forums.windrivers.com/

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Thanks for the responses! First off, I have tried hooking up to an external monitor and still get no display whatsoever. The first laptop that came in has the keys labeled as to which once switch between lcd and external monitor and I tried them all with no results. I have never hooked up a 2.5 drive to anything but a laptop don't you need some kind of converter or something. The pins look a little to compact for a normal ide to work? I did try disconnecting some of the devices but haven't done everything yet, I'll try that. I thought of holding the power button as well ( on the one that actually has a power button ) and that didn't do anything. I did check the connections to the hd and they all seem normal. I've seem laptop cmos batteries go before but I've always at least been able to get into cmos and see things, these won't even light up the screen! Thanks again for your replies any and all additional replies welcome.

GLSmith

How hard is it to replace the cmos battery in a laptop? Where would i get the batteries and where do I go about looking for it in the laptop? I don't normally do a whole lot with laptops.

Thanks
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[This message has been edited by Shard92 (edited February 21, 2001).]

If the laptop still doesn't post without the hd connected I don't think the cmos battery is the problem. Some are fairly easy to locate many require disassembly. You may be able to find the location if you can dig up a manual maybe from the makers website. Laptops are somewhat tedious and fairly delicate to work on. We charged double the normal rate as sometimes you can do everything right and still have something fail in the laptop that was working before. To connect the laptop hd you to standard ide you do need an adaptor. And you should make sure it's plugged on correctly as the power in hooked up wrong can fry the hd. I recommended a standard bench machine as I've had laptop hd's work fine in some laptops but not in others so a standard pc seems to give more certain results on testing the drive. But just check it in another laptop if you have a handy working model as laptop hd's seem more prone to failure then the standard hd's. Again however if no post with hd disconnected the hd isn't the problem (or at least not the only problem). Often the symtoms you discribe can be attributed to a failing motherboard or some connection in the laptop failing. Parts to buy new can be very expensive so it's likely only worth the money to replace a motherboard if you have a used one handy. If you decide to tear into it you could check for poor connections, cracks in circut boards,or burn marks.

Thanks crowbar I got a note from acer saying they believe it to be the powersupply or the motherboard. see also other post.

Thanks again!

GLSmith

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