Acer Aspire 5050- No Post

I have a Acer Aspire 5050 that is one yr old December 26th, 2007.

It will not boot when warm. Nothing comes up on the screen, no post at all. The lights all come on, the DVD drive seeks, the hard drive seeks, the fan comes on, but never does it post or boot.

But if I let it sit for a while, and presto, it works. The sad thing is that it's out of warranty now by just over a month.

 

weird have,nt seen that issue with 5050 before is any dusty in fan?

 

I have found two other instances of this model with this problem, so it seems rare at this point. I have the links at home.

Dusty fan, that is my next move. I am going to borrow a can of air from work and see if that is it, but I don't think it is the issue as the fan doesn't speed up like it's hot when this happens. I know the fan's throttle does work, as when I am taxing the notebook, it does rev up to compensate.

 

Well, even after a good blowout, it still doesn't post when warm. I can only wonder just how long it will continue to work like this before it buys the farm completely.

Time to budget in a new laptop, and I am not pleased about having to do this already after only 13 months of light usage of this one.

 

I have used fan from that die due to unrelate issues

if you instrested

 

Just to clarify, when you first start the machine, it sits there with a black screen, but after a period of time, Windows will boot and you will be able to use the machine? If this is the case, how long do you have to wait before Windows will begin loading?

 

I aplogize for the extremely long response time. I just revisited this thread since it appears my laptop is getting worse.

To answer your question, it either posts or it doesn't. It won't post if being turned on or rebooted when "warmed up", but it will post and proceed to boot if it sits for an hour.

But now the symptoms are worsening, it now most of the time will not make it past the boot loader screen where I select either XP or Vista.. usually locks up in the first second there.

I am so disappointed. I really do not have the money to replace this laptop.

Found this on the Acer Website:

 

LOL, look at this thread...

http://www.ozzu.com/hardware/acer-laptop-does-not-start-t76457.html

sheesh.

 

there are three faults that can cause this, The first is that the RAM is starting to fail causing a no boot on occasion (oddly when this happens, it will boot and work fine every now and again). second, the usb board which also holds the sleep sitch and the power pin is faulty iether causeing problems with the power throughput or, on occasion, a sticky sleep switch. Finally the mainboard is dying and when warm, some of the capacitors which allow it to boot are not functioning correctly. Hope this helps

 

You mentioned USB. I have been having trouble with USB devices being correctly recognized. My PPC 6800 phone in particular rarely ever gets correctly recognized and ends up as an unknown device. It syncs up fine on my desktop and my workstation at work, so that fingers the laptop's USB as having issues.

I have monkeyed with the RAM. I have two sticks, one that came with it and one stick of Kingston I bought. Both pass memory tests, the symptoms persist with either stick of RAM installed or both. I am fairly certain the RAM is working.

 

As memory recalls, there is one or two usb ports on the rear right hand side of the machine. These are connected to the mainboard through a separate board which causes a whole host of problems if it goes wrong, including the ones that you are having. Unfortunatley all the power for the machine goes through this board so it can't simpley be removed. These are quite cheap though and relativley easy to fit

 

I have a single port on the left side which is the one I was using primarily until the problems started with the recognizing the devices... I then moved to using the rear ones you talk of, and they started having issues.

Last night, I was able to get the machine to boot up and run all night long. I woke in the middle of the night for a quick bathroom trip, stopped by on my way and rebooted it. It successfully rebooted. Yet this morning, I did the same test, and it's dead again. Arrgg!!

I wonder if there is a power saving mode for the USB ports that might be doing this. If I found the setting and turned it off so USB didn't go into a power saving mode....

 

Try it. In the control panel, expand the USB controller section, right mouse click on the USB Root hub. the window that opens has a power management tab in it and the power saving mode can be switched off. Let me know if this works.

 

I made the changes to the power management of the USB Root Hubs.

Last night, I booted the laptop initially at around 5:30PM and over the course of the evening rebooted it 4 times, every time, it posted and proceeded to boot normally. This morning, it rebooted successfully as well.

I am not totally convinced this is a fix, but it is a strong candidate as one. It would be nice to see some other people with the same problem try this as well to see if it helps them.

 

It's back to it's old tricks.

 

Ok, new theory, LOL.

I think the problem lies in running two DIMMS at the same time.

I bought a second 1GB DIMM for it, Kingston brand. It worked great with it when I bought it.

But, here is what I think is happening... When two dimms are used, I think it overloads something that is weak on the motherboard. I can't get it to boot reliably after it has been running with two DIMMS, in fact, it won't post at all unless it sits for an hour.. you can even try it over and over during that hour and it won't post, but once that hour is up, it posts and tries to run, most often it crashes though.

Now, when running just a single DIMM, either the one I bought or the one that came with the computer, it is fine. It posts and boots and runs for days on end with no errors. It reboots fine as well.

Now, I am wondering since it is a Turion64 with an integrated memory controller, is it a issue with the CPU or is it in fact a motherboard issue? Either way, I guess I am just happy it at least works with 1GB of RAM. I also have the option of booting to XP Media Center 2005 instead of Vista, so with only 1GB of RAM, I may be better off going back to XP.