Is it the motherboard? or is it the graphics card?

I'm trying to help a friend to fix his laptop. The laptop is an ACER 5520 with a dedicated nVidia Go 8400M

When the laptop is switched ON, it will restart it self constantly every 3 seconds. If I hold Fn+Esc while switching the laptop ON, the laptop stays ON and doesn't restart itself.

I tested, the RAM, DVD drive, HDD, and CPU and both are OK. I removed the wifi.

1- Is the motherboard faulty? or is it the graphics card?

2- Is there anyway for me to test the GPU? (i.e. without having another laptop)

3- when you do a bad flash, do you damage the bios in the motherboard only? or do you damage the bios in the GPU too?

 

does anything show up on the screen? if not plug it into an external monitor and try. if still nothing, it is probably the graphics card

there is no bios in the GPU, if you do in fact do a bad flash, it is possible that the bios (motherboard) is damaged. i think it's a motherboard problem, as a faulty graphics card probably wont make your computer restart, just make it have nothing show up on the monitor

 

The GPU does have its own BIOS. Why else would we have programs like NVFlash? If the BIOS update was supposed to update the GPU BIOS as well, and you got a bad flash, it may have indeed messed up the latter. Otherwise, your GPU BIOS should be unaffected.

At any rate, when you say that the laptop "stays on", does that imply that it works normally? If this machine is under warranty, have you tried calling Acer's support?

 

I mean that it doen't restart every 3 seconds but nothing shows on the screen.

 

Maybe is the screen?

 

I am having exactly the same problem with my laptop having just posted in the asus section. I think after reading what you have said and what I have experienced we are having motherboard issues

 

Try with Linux cd, if that works well, then it's not the screen or motherboard.

 

nop I already teste it and it's fine

I think you might be right

 

Someone just replied in my thread to reset the bios. Either by : Taking battery out, unplugging from wall and then pressing on button for 5 seconds then try to see if it works or to open the laptop and remove the cmos battery then put back in. Hope this works for you I am going to try it later.

 

thanks

Question:
How do you reset the bios when the CMOS battery is soldered to the motherboard?

 

there might be a wire coming from it going into a socket on the MB. Just yank it out and then put it back in again and re-boot. I tried it earlier and I had no luck though. I think it is my GPU.

 

Does the computer to a hard restart, or does it go through the Windows shutdown screens and the like?

The truth is that it probably *isn't* your GPU. If your GPU were to fail, your system would display a black screen (b/c the backlights are on) and remain unresponsive. If you're experiencing hard restarts, I would say that it's probably the power supply (in which case the only fix is to replace the mainboard).

 

The battery has two short wires (less than a centimeter long). Both wire are soldered to the motherboard, and can not be disconnected.

So any idea of how to reset the bios when the battery is soldered to the board.

 

Don't know if anyone will go :O dont do thatt to my idea but you can always try to short out the cmos battery with a flat screw driver. Yeah its not exactly a good idea, but I have done that before and nothing blew up. Short for like 10 seconds isn't good for battery but it should drop the voltage down to almost nothing and reset the thing. It was easier than desoldering a wire and it worked for me.

 

I would defiantly not follow what this guy said, you might end up breaking the parts. Never follow direction where there's a chance something could blow up. Anyway back on topic, call Asus and see if your warranty covers this problem and try doing a fresh install of windows to see if the problem still exists.

 

you mean ACER .