Acer Travelmate 2350, LEDs on but no boot

[DIYspanner]

Sudden problem.

Left the laptop booted up.

Came back and nothing.

All I have now is the front two green and one blue LEDs lighting up when I put the DC plug in but not boot. Once the plug is removed, the LEDs go out.


Any ideas?

 

[AronSearle]

Could be dead motherboard, some of the lights are connected to the power not the motherboard (well, loosley speaking).

Generally a duff CPU or memory will still allow it to go to bios, then it will beeeeeep.

Does it make any beeping noises, or just nothing at all?

Try taking out the battery for a few minutes, not much chance of it working but it could.

 

[DIYspanner]

Many thanks AronSearle

No beep just front LEDs lit up when DC plug is in.

I'll take the battery out for a while.


Is it worth taking apart and replacing the CMOS battery ?

 

[AronSearle]

Many thanks AronSearle

No beep just front LEDs lit up when DC plug is in.

I'll take the battery out for a while.


Is it worth taking apart and replacing the CMOS battery ?

I am somewhat guessing, but from my experiance that tells me the power unit or the motherboard is dead.

I am more familiar with desktop power units, I have had a few occurances where power leds still work, but the unit is essentially dead.

 

[DIYspanner]

I'll leave the battery out for a few days then reconnect and see what happens.

I found a video on youtube that shows how to take the laptop apart..............just possible there's a bad connection!

 

[DIYspanner]

I put the battery back in this morning and the laptop came back to life, started to boot, then died after about 20 seconds.

 

[AronSearle]

What happens if you power it up from mains without the battery inserted (It should still work as I have a laptop set up as a media server without the battery inserted)?

Should make no difference, but can't hurt to try on the offchance the battery is causing issues.

If it still doesnt work I would still guess the power or motherboard is broken, given it's age and spec you could buy a better second hand one for £20-30 (I may be biased as I have an old laptop I am thinking of selling wink wink).

If you open it up look for swollen or burst capacitors on the motherboard (they often smell as well), I can't say what to look for on the PSU as I have never played with a laptop PSU, but on desktop PSU's they always smell of burnt metal/plastic when they go bad.

 

[Monkeh]

Bad caps are pretty unlikely on a laptop.

Component level repair is possible (I just checked and appear to have full schematics for one of those), but requires tools and experience. Also, a laptop of that age is very much not worth the expense.

 

[DIYspanner]

Had the laptop to bits and couldn't find any damage or loose connections.


Tried to boot it after re-assembly - still the same - I believe its had it.