Acer Extensa 4420 won't power up

Bought off Ebay, formatted C installed XP Pro and all Acer drivers, worked fine for a week, now when I try to boot it only comes on for a short time with no start up screen showing, shuts off on AC or DC

 

See if it's under warranty, if not then contact the seller and tell them of the problem, since it's only been a week you can possibly file a complaint with paypal saying the laptop is faulty.

 

It is a known motherboard issue, the batch of Extensa 4420 manufactured in late 2008 had defective motherboard installed. Just call Acer repair and send in the computer as I assume you are still under warranty. I just got back mine with MB replaced, everything works fine now.

 

Have exact same problem. Very frustrating. Will try BB to see if they will take it back.

 

i have the same problem with a 5420 made in late 07 bought from best buy too bad it isnt under warranty still i got it to turn on once then after a few days it died again

 

Hi . I have a extensa 4420 which I bought last year and recently I was having same problem like many of you. When I turn it on it would flash hdd and cd light and after few seconds it shut down . Sometimes it would power up but more frequently it didn't. I red many posts and tried all possible but nothing worked . So I thought maybe there is a problem with CMOS battery . So as a last resort I took whole notebook completely a part. Look at the battery model , recheck ALL possible connectors to motherboard and pushed on them to make sure there are properly seated. After that a have put everything back together and tried to power it up . It came up right away without a problem. It has been two days and not a single problem. I tried to power it on and off more than 30 times ever since and it still works . That tells me that ether CMOS-battery or some connector to motherboard or maybe even memory was not seated properly . It may have got lose carrying laptop around. I hope it will help at least to some of you .
Please be careful if you decide to take the notebook a part .

 

I'm having a problem where when my laptop (same model), after going into sleep mode, when powering back up to resume, it loses track of time (goes back to January 2006)....checked the BIOS which also seems to be changed to this time...I change the time back to current time then restart computer it is fine until going back into sleep mode which then sometimes problem reoccurs. now thinking could also be a problem with the CMOS battery seat. Does this problem sound like similar or could be a cause of this. How do I get to the cmos battery to check it? Thanks.

 

CMOS battery is under the keyboard . But you will have to take the whole notebook a part . Go to the link
http://thelonehair.blogspot.com/2008/04/acer-extensa-5420-bluetooth-quick.html.

It will give you some guidence .( not same notebook but very similar )
Good luck.

P.S. One more link http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Take-Apart-a-Laptop/

 

You would be very suprised how effective a power reset is on any electronic device! Anything using a battery/source of power and has capacitors in it this will work for. Unplugging everything and discharging the device, usually by holding power button down, making sure no power source is installed (e.g. battery, power cable) for 30seconds and then plug it back in. I have had this work for many of my past owned laptops and worked for me when my old iPod locked up lol.

 

that's what I was afraid of...thanks for the info.

 

I just tried this on a Acer Extensa 4420 that was having the same exact problem. It now works fine...if you want to know the model of the battery before opening the laptop it's a CR2032 battery. I fiddled with the connections as well but not really.

Thanks m.miksatko!

 

darn i should have looked this up, i just took apart my extensa 2 days ago to replace the speakers and fiddle with the LCD connection.... hmmm guess i'll have to do that again this weekend. Mine at least boots up, MOST of the time, But I have noticed the times it does it goes through that cycle of flashing the hdd and cd light multiple times before the Acer splash screen finally appears.

Unfortunately this just started happening this past week and my laptop is already a year past warranty. I guess if this doesn't work i should start searching for replacement motherboards on eBay, and use it as an excuse to upgrade the Athlon X2 to a Turion X2 Highest CPU i've found that will work on the Extensa 4420 is the AMD Turion TL-66 2.3ghz X2

 

@m.miksatko- Thanks so much for your post. I had an Extensa 5420 that had the same problem. It would turn on once when the unit was cold, and would run until I shut it down. (even for several days.) So no overheating issue. (I did pull out heatsync and fan and cleaned both initially thinking overheating, but I was wrong.) But if I restarted or tried to start it up after the laptop had initially be running, it would give me no display at all, and would just blink three times or so and shut back off. So after reading post after post saying the motherboard was dead, or nvidia graphics issue, I came across your suggestion of a bad cmos battery and I remembered that the time had been way off. In a last ditch effort to save this unit, I pulled it apart and replaced the cmos battery. Put back together, power it up, and what do you know, it powered on the first time. I restarted, and it went right back to windows. I had already taken this thing apart to clean it so I don't think it was a matter of just reseating something. But for four dollars, I got a working laptop that someone else was going to throw away! I have been running it for over a week now with no problems. Thanks!

 

m.miksatko - you da man! I've been having the very same problem with my Extensa 4420. After reading your post I decided to skip the cables reseating, etc. and aimed straight at the CMOS battery. I took the unit apart (that was the trickiest part; remember, there are some screws under the keyboard), found the CMOS battery, pulled it out, cleaned both the battery and the socket contacts, then (now, I believe, goes the most important part) I slightly bent the socket contacts so that the battery sits tighter...The laptop is running perfectly ever since! Thank you m.miksatko so much for your discovery!

 

Thank you miksatko. I was having the same problem as everyone else. I was just about to buy a new laptop whe I read your post and found your awesome disovery. I decided to do it and now I have my laptop back! If only I knew of this sooner. Thanks again!