4820TG dying a slow and painful death

OK, well, this was without a doubt the nicest laptop I've ever owned. Until it wasn't. I've read most of the owners lounge stuff (its WAYYYYY too big now to find any info)

Bought last september, and in the past 3 months,

The wireless card has died
The webcam died
The trackpad died
The sleep mechanism is mostly dead, as when I close it, sometimes it sleeps, sometimes it stays on until the battery dies. Sometimes, if I plug it in when its closed and sleeping, it turns on by itself and stays on. Sometimes, when it wakes from sleep, the screen is black

Ugh, what a pain. I'm at a loss now. I'll send it in for depot service, but I'm not hopeful about a long a fruitful life for this formerly wonderful machine

 

Have you tried reinstalling Windows (or using eRecovery)?

 

How did you kill all those components? The wireless card shouldn't die that easily unless you are overvolting it with the wrong power adapter or it got loose from the connector inside. Also, I've never heard of a trackpad dying in such a short period. Maybe, the drivers got corrupted?

Good luck with the repair department.

 

Yeah, thanks. I'm reinstalling W7-64 right now to see what will happen. The network card definitely died, I replaced it with an Intel (which is MUCH faster anyway), and all is well. The webcam started getting flaky a couple of months ago, now doesn't work at all. I started using an external webcam which works fine. The trackpad is totally weird, don't understand it all.

I'm gonna do a clean reinstall and see what happens. I've never had any problems with Windows 7-64 on any machines (we have around 10 in my family), and they have all been trouble free except the 4820TG.

I'll let you know how it goes. If a reinstall fixes some of the stuff, then I'll be somewhat happy. The wireless network card replacement was a good upgrade anyway over the dreadful broadcom junk that was in there.

I do love this machine, as I travel pretty heavily for business, and it does EVERYTHING well usually. The deterioration though has been pretty painful

 

I had a similar problem with my 3820TG. It started as a short in the webcam and ultimately wound up doing a lot of other damage, including the trackpad. I sent it to the depot and it was returned in 2 weeks completely rebuilt and I haven't had an issue since. Do you feel any heat near the Webcam?

Put the original parts back in as much as you can. Go on "fix my Acer" and get authorization to send it back to the depot. Good luck. Your problems with the 4820TG are extremely uncommon. Luck of the draw.

Bronsky

 

Well, Downloads had it right. I did a complete reinstall and everything but the webcam is working right now. I'll still jerk around with that for a bit. The power/sleep/hibernate issue needs some work, although I can live with it most of the time (it sucks when I shut it, then it turns itself on while in my backpack, then take it out to use it and its dead)

Bronsky, you are THE scholar of these machines.... All hail NJ!!

 

Well, everything is basically working, except the webcam. So in the end, the webcam died, and the wireless network card died. The trackpad is back, and the sleep mechanism seems to be working ok.

I did things a bit differently this time when I did the clean install. Complete W7-64, then SP1, then windows update (a couple of times) then the latest video drivers from Acer. Then I did the Acer power software, then piece by piece the rest.

Acer crystal eye either shows no video, or just crashes over and over. I let the Intel driver inspection thingy look for software and then I did the chipset update from them directly.

So far so good. No errors in the event log, and its definitely working better than before. FYI, I'm using a commercial 240GB SSD with the horrific Indilinx controller and have no idea if that caused any problems.