Acer 3000 weird fault.....any help?

mark31385

mark31385

mark31385

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Joined
12 Oct 2008
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6
Hi Guy's,

Got a strange fault with an Acer Aspire 3000, and its bugging me after it came to life the other day. It was a good laptop and I'd like to get it working again.

Just over a year ago all was working well on it. Then one morning I turned it on, but it wouldn't power up (no cpu fan or HDD spinning just dead) apart from the charging light on the front. This just went solid green, normally it goes amber when charging.

So i thought I'd investigate, I started by removing the RAM cleaning and reseating, same with the HDD, even cleaned and applied more heat sink paste and all the heatsinks and reseated them. Looked for shorts but nothing obvious. Stripped it fully down made sure nothing was overheating.

Tried it with the battery out and just on mains. Cleared the BIOS by removing the battery for 5 mins. All to no avail. So it was just all put back together and put in a cupboard for a year and forgot about.

Now last night I thought I'd see if it had any components I could use. But out of curiosity I thought I'd see it it would power up. Plugged in the charger and it started charging, strange i thought didn't do this last time. Powered it on and it booted up to my surprise.

So I shut it down and thought I'd move it to a room that I was in. Went to power it on again and I was back at the original fault solid green light and nothing spinning or starting up .

So I did what I did last time and nothing still.

So I've come to the conclusion that the fault is something that is holding a charge, as over a year everything will have fully discharged.

Where do I start in finding it? I think it could be the battery but I refuse to buy a new one until I can confirm this.

Or can anyone else shed a light on it?


Any help appreciated

thankyou in advance
 
so you press the power button and all you get is a black screen and the power light goes green as to say its on?

Are you sure the fan wont come on? if you leave it in this state for a while does it get warm/hot? will the fan finally come on? try this and see, also try without the battery being connected.
 
Hi Haz,

thanks for the reply.

Right I've tried what you have said, disconnected the battery and plugged the charger in. I left it in this state for half an hour and nothing is getting warm or even spinning up.

The only light I get coming on is the charge/mains led at the front, this just stays solid green.

The power button LED isn't coming on either.

Normally I'd leave the laptop, but after it booted up the other day after being in a cupboard for a year. I'm determined to fix it.

But now it is back to what it was doing a year ago lol :mad:
 
mark31385 said:
Hi Haz,

thanks for the reply.

Right I've tried what you have said, disconnected the battery and plugged the charger in. I left it in this state for half an hour and nothing is getting warm or even spinning up.

The only light I get coming on is the charge/mains led at the front, this just stays solid green.

The power button LED isn't coming on either.

Normally I'd leave the laptop, but after it booted up the other day after being in a cupboard for a year. I'm determined to fix it.

But now it is back to what it was doing a year ago lol :mad:
Click to expand...



Hi
so a light is on when its plugged in, this shows that the mother board is getting power, if you insert the battery does it change as to show its now charging the battery? like go orange or red?

It could just mean the power button is faulty, it may have got damp or just worn out.
im 99% certain its not a gpu ram or cpu fault as the thing would still power on but not display anything.
The worse case scenario is that the mother board is faulty but i would be very surprised.
 
Thanks for taking the time to reply Haz,

I've suspected the power button before. But have ruled it out.

As when you plug the battery in, the green LED should go to amber, but it just stays green. I suspect that the motherboard is fine too as it powered on the other night lol.

It's almost like something has got charge in it now, and it doesn't seem to like it.

The only thing I haven't tried is a replacement battery, but with the battery removed and it plugged in to the mains, I'm fairly certain it should just boot up.

I know my way around circuit boards as I'm an electronics engineer, but everything is reading fine, hence I'm so baffled lol.

You could almost say its stuck in hibernation mode, but with no display nothing spinning up and the battery not charging.

Just very weird how it all worked the other night.
 
Last year a friend had the same model as you and it had EXACTLY the same fault that you have. The first time it happened they said all they had done was pick the laptop up and it switched itself off. I tried everything I could think of to get it going, incuding everything you have done, swapped memory etc took battery out and held power button down for 30 seconds to discharge motherboard, but it refused to work.

I visited them about a week later and just out of curiosity thought I'd switch it on & unbelievably it sprang to life. It then worked perfectly for about 4 months, but then developed the same fault again at Xmas.

Tried to find the problem again, but only the few times I was successful in getting it to boot was when I removed the bottom CPU fan cover, got friend to hold up laptop & switch it on, while I was underneath it spinning the CPU fan with a small paintbrush. Thought maybe fan or fan sensor was faulty, so fitted new fan but still the same problem.

Its now in PC Heaven. Its up to you, but don't think I would waste money on a new battery. Replying becaused I share your frustration
 
Out of interest what spec is it? Google seems to suggest Sempron + Sis Mirage?

Just wondered if it had the "nvidia defect" that quite a few laptops suffer with.
 
Hi Haz and Horror,

Yep tried removing the CMOS battery, done almost everything I can think off.

It is the AMD sempron and SIS setup, did look in to the NVidia problems.

After doing some research it seems like a lot of ACER laptops across the range suffer from this problem. And no one has ever found out the problem. Quite a few people suggest poor soldering, and looking at the board its not the best I've seen.

Going to try one last thing, after that I'm out of ideas.

Seems as I don't have access to a solder bath I'm going to chuck the mobo in the oven for 10 mins and try see if it will reflow some of the solder.

If that fails, does anyone have any suggestions of what I can do with the laptop, eg, picture frame or something lol :p
 
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