2370 sleep turns into coma

Two days ago there was a power hiccup. The external monitor blanked and came back on, but my 2370 didn't respond. I forced it to power off, then had to remove AC & battery and hold the power button for a few seconds, reconnect power and sucessfully rebooted. Later that day I was using the notebook on battery and told it to sleep. It has never re-awoken.

Typical pattern, indicator lights all work (the HD light blinks once), the drives spin, but nothing happens. Signs the PC isn't reading the BIOS to start the bootstrap.

The same power trick mentioned above doesn't work, and hasn't worked even after several hours of sitting without a connected power source. I'm thinking (hopeing)that it is still an issue that the BIOS CMOS needs to be cleared, then the settings fixed during a boot. To that end I am leaving it sit for the weekend without power hoping all the juice stored in the system will disapate.

However, for those of you who have gone to the pain of disassembly (more than just opening the bottom access hatch) did you recall if you spotted a CMOS battery or a shorting jumper? The CMOS chip is located on the bottom side of the motherboard, sort of centered between the AC jack and the battery connection. Fuzzy pictures of the motherboard show what I thought are capacitors in this area, but it is possible that one is actually a rechargable battery about the size of a hearing aid battery.

 

I know this is a long shot but try reinserting your memory chip(s) (take them out and put them back in) and see if that helps.
Good luck

 

Hey there,

I think the CMOS battery is soldered in this model (Per Averatec rep) I obviously had to see it to believe it . After spending a whole Saturday on it the only thing that resembled a cmos battery was located right next to the touch pad (if you look at the touch pad its to the right side of it) the only possible way I was able to access it was to take all the screws from underneath and take out the lcd frame THEN I was able to *cough* pry *cough* the plastic(top). It should come off easily then you will see the sensors for the touch pad and right next to it you will see a round object that part of it is soldered to the motherboard and that should be the battery. In my case the solder is half broken so every time I pull out the main battery or drain it out, I get a message about some error and a prompt to pres F1 or F2, and the date and time is reset. As long as you have some juice in the battery then you shouldn't have such a problem. About the jumper I could not locate anything like that on this unit. If you need I will post pictures for you but you have to give me a week until I am done with my finales.

Personally I don't think that reseting the battery will do much, but then again I might be wrong. on a side note I remember you writing a post few weeks ago about the expiration of the averatec warranty, and then I read this post... its like Averatec had it all planned

sorry for the horrid grammar, hope this helps.

 

steve p : Thanks - one of the earliest things tried, including swapping all the combinations of the two sticks in case one went bad. Good thought though.

Aeroplay: Thanks for the info - all the way to the front-top of the motherboard for a battery? I never would have found it. The CMOS chip it would be protecting is to the left-back-bottom of the motherboard (between the AC & DC connections, behind the DVD drive)

I'm giving this unit a 36 hour drain time, with the power switch pressed throughout (stuck a pea-sized wad of paper on top of the switch and closed the lid). If that doesn't do it, then I may have to start removing screws...

I'm HOPING it is just a corrupted CMOS, and not a blown chip from a power surge... I have insurance for the latter situation, but agents, deductables, etc can take more time than I wish for. I WON'T send this unit to Averatec for repair. I just have bad vibes that this company is going to shut its doors in the near future and retreiving gear from bankruptcy can take more time than it is worth.

 

I have replaced my Averatec 2370 with an Everex Stepnote ST5340. The replacement arrived day before yesterday.

Before even pressing the power button, I swapped in my hard drive, RAM, and ReadyBoost SD chip, directly out of my Averatec 2370.

I then inserted the battery, plugged in the AC adapter and booted. I had been running the Everex BIOS firmware on my Averatec, so the screen that came up was familiar. I entered the BIOS setup and made sure the RAM and drive were recognized.

I then booted into Vista. The only "glitch" was the usual warning that I hadn't shut down my PC properly [duh!] and I told Vista to boot normally. And that is exactly what Vista did without complaint! I was back exactly where I was before the coma.

Now... Vista did subsequently warn me that I had to re-activate. I told it to do so over the Internet, which it did within seconds with success. Also, on the next re-boot Vista ran its Chkdsk routine - the crash had screwed up an index which Vista repaired without a problem.

Honestly, it took longer to download the 5-day backlog of email than it did to be up and running. Every single one of the device drivers from the 2370 loaded just fine on the ST5340T, proving these really are the same unit.

I'm on vacation next week, so I'll wait until then to strip down the 2370 and see if it can be resurrected. If so, I'll use the 1GB of RAM and the hard drive from the Everex unit...

 

Well, my Averatec 2370 died twice with the similar symptoms. They replace the motherboard only to have it died again a month later. The replacement seems to be working so far, but i am guessing that the problem may be some sort of design flaw.

 

In my case, I'm convinced it was the power spike. I'm also pretty sure the problem is a corrupted CMOS. The BIOS core functions are there, but the system doesn't know how to read a drive to do a bootstrap.

The CMOS itself is easy to get at - there is a window under the keyboard - however to clear this kind of problem you would either have to put the chip in a CMOS programmer or swap in a new pre-programmed chip. The problem here is the chip is not in a socket, but wave soldered to the motherboard. There are few shops able to competently do this kind of component work and it's probably just as cost effective to replace the entire motherboard.

I really like this notebook and I'm happy with its Everex twin, although the Averatec pearl black case makes for a classier looking package.

For a limited time, I'm selling the carcass cheap - terms here:
http://www.averatec-forums.com/index.php?topic=192.0

If no buyer appears, after the New Year, I will break the unit into packages and auction the pieces on eBay.

 

Hi everybody!

I´m from the same club you all belong... the dead 2370 club! My best guess is that if all of us experienced the same problem, it has to be some sort of design flaw. Just like many of you, one night, I sent the laptop to hibernation, the following morning... nothing... just the power led turns on, wireless (if switch is in "on" position) and ac if the laptop is plugged.

I did not try to call averatec or anything since I know I´m way out of warranty, besides, I don´t live in the US, so it would be veeery troublesome to send the laptop and get it back. So if my laptop is nothing but a cute black paperweight, might as well try to do something myself right??

Well, I followed the above stated instructions in how to have full access to the motherboard. Could somebody tell me where the CMOS battery is? the only thing that looked like a battery was soldered to the mobo, so please let me know if I have to cut it and re-solder it again.

Since I was already at it, I pretty much dissasembled whatever I could and put it back together again just to see if by a longshot that fixed the problem. Bad decision... I only made it worse, since now my laptop won´t even turn the power led on or nothing... now it´s 110% dead... any guesses on what I might have forgotten to plug in back again?

Also, one more thing... Underneath the black adhesive tape that holds the modem wires I found a glob of silicon covering some parts, is this normal? or does that maybe point out that the mobo had something wrong with it all the way from the beginning???

I'm posting 2 pictures, one where I point out what I think the CMOS battery is (please confirm!!!) and the other one points out where the silicon was.

If anybody can be of any assistance... I would be much grateful... If somebody wants some 2370 parts... let me know! I might have to sell them!

 

You have found the only battery others and myself have noticed.

In case of my still sleeping unit, I believe a power surge through the wired network adapter scrambled the CMOS to the point it cannot be repaired except by either replacement or external reprogramming. While FIC's engineers made the CMOS very easy to access (just lift the keyboard), it is soldered in place making such access nearly meaningless.

The battery on the other hand, requires significant disassembly to access. I also have some questions about whether that battery actually supports the CMOS settings. If you look at my revised copy of your photograph, I have pointed out the CMOS, BIOS, and power connections. All are close together, which makes sense. You'll notice the battery is clear across the motherboard diagonally. It doesn't make sense to me that the engineers would have done this if the primary purpose of the battery is to support the CMOS settings.

I could spot no obvious jumper to short out the CMOS, also clipping a lead on the battery made absolutely no change in the post problem actions of the notebook. Indicator lights come on, the battery re-charges, drives spin up (but don't start reading near as I can tell). To me, that says the lowest levels of the BIOS are still functional and work independently of the code in the CMOS chip.

I ran into a minor problem with the Everex clone that replaced my Averatec 2300. And until that is resolved, I want to retain a cache of spare parts. Everex is seeing if they can find a unit to cross-ship with me, given the current unit is only a month old and officemax.com is sold-out.

As I'll sell only the whole unit privately and I won't sell my old unit bit by bit upon private request (I'll create parts bundles and use eBay). You may pick up some small funds if you are willing to sell only the key components requested.

In my opinion, unless you also see some sign of discoloration, the silicon you describe is likely meaningless.

 

So did anyone figure out the solution to this problem?

I was so afraid to shut off my laptop because of fear that it might not start up again (once it runs, it's fine), so I left it on last night. I told the monitor to go off after 1 minute.

I woke up this morning and guess what? It was completely shut off. I thought that was weird. I'd love to hear any advice and thoughts.

Thanks.

 

My 1050 started out similar to yours, except mine was spontanious. no ryhme or reason. A mystery problem! (see "1050, No Screen on Reboot, wait, then Normal Boot") Then finally no screen. It cost me a motherboard and a HDD (not the solution, but two things I wanted) I guess what I am trying to say is don't be too anxious to buy new parts. They are not always the solution.
good luck on your fix!