Hi bit-techers, another puzzler one here. My laptop can't boot. It doesn't even attempt it. Here's the background. A few days ago after a few hours of use I noticed that the system time in windows was about 4 hours out. Resynced it and it was all fine. Few more hours later... It was 3 hours slow... Give or take a few YEARS. Its like the BIOS had just forgot the date. I resynced again and would check the bios next time I started up. Next day, came hope from work and... Nothing. Dead. Nada. Was plugged in, lights on the unit indicated power. But no boot, not even a fan spin. I closed the laptop and walked away... Then heard the windows startup noise behind me. Opened up the laptop... It was alive. Hm. Gave windows the Restart command... It shut down but did not restart. Wouldn't power back up manually either. Next day I eventually get it to boot again randomly. When it is powered up it shows no warnings, no issues, 100% stable. I am totally stumped. I have tried: Booting with battery only Booting with power brick only Changing CMOS battery Holy water Holding power button for 30 sec with no power sources I have never seen nor heard of this problem before. I've had this laptop for 5 years and it has served me well. If I can save it I will be most happy, as will my wallet.
What laptop is it? If it is a consumer level laptop (assuming also <~1500$), and it latest 5 years, consider yourself lucky already. Usually sub-1000$ systems don't last this long.
That does sound a weird one. Maybe the laptops internal psu is dieing? Have you opened it up to visually inspect and see if there are any obvious/noticable problems? Has it been dropped recently?
It is an Acer 5920g (HD-DVD version, no blu-ray version back then). I have taken it apart (to get at the very awkwardly placed CMOS battery) and I couldn't see any signs of damage (though a lot of components are consealed under heatsinks and heatpipes). Laptop was not dropped or hit or anything like that. While the laptop is not critical to my daily life, it is an inconvience to lose it. Plus this laptop got me though my uni course so it actually has a lot of sentimental value. To have to replace it would almost be heartbreaking. And wallet breaking. The fact it is refusing to do ANYTHING do point to a power issue. I need to have another look at that area and see if I can see the problem. I have already taken an image of the hard drive in case it totally fries itself.
I'm guessing from the sound of it the mobo has died, it might need reflowing from a cracked solder joint. I had a laptop a few years ago the would only fire up if you twisted it slightly. Try twisting it about gently and if it works then i think that is the problem.
i'll have to open it up again, though its a complete bitch do to as its held together by about a million billion screws. I'm going to follow the leads from the power socket until I hit the mobo. is there any way to jump start a laptop? fake a power up signal from the PSU?
You could try the old Paperclip trick http://www.overclock.net/t/96712/ho...supply-psu-test-a-power-supply-and-components That is if you can locate the connector.
I had an acer that was similure. my solution, pull battery, Pull power lead, press the power on to drain the residual power, Replace power lead Try switch on If works run for a few mins then reinsert battery Disclamour: I do not take any responsibility if goes wrong and blows anything. Something in the charge circuit was dieing cause ing the refusal to boot. And before you ask no I didn't fix it because a few months later I put my fist through the screen trying to print!
OK, I have sorted it... sort of. I can now power up the laptop, looks like a loose connection somewhere... but the clock is still jumping backwards randomly. I dont know how or why it happends. I checked the BIOS and the clock had just... stopped. The date was correct, but the time was way off. I can't trust it anymore unless I manually resync it with the time server lol.
I've changed the battery and checked the connections. Also noticed that the laptop wont power down correctly, windows will shut down fine but it will not power off. To me, this points to a problem between PSU and mobo. Sometimes the clock is ticking along fine, then all of a sudden... stop. I wonder if you can get windows to ignore the bios clock.
Hope it will surely work for you. pull battery outside from laptop, pull power led and press the power on to drain the residual power, Replace power lead, Try switch on If works run for a few mins then reinsert battery.
