Acer Aspire & Travelmate Probs

[RoachycaL]

Hi guys,

Ive got a few questions to ask here:

Firstly, we as a family own an Acer Aspire 1620. My mum works in a school as the headteacher so it is owned by the school. The past month I have been working with the ICT Technician fixing various problems becuase Its generally a very fun place to work.

There has been a dead Acer Aspire 283XC where we work which was apparently dropped and never turned on again - I am infact typing on it right now. I decided to take it home and take it to pieces and to my surprise it turned on when I put it back together.

There are 2 problems with this laptop. These are that at the moment Im using the Aspires adaptor to power the laptop and every time I move the cable even slightly it says its unplugged, then plugged in which it does this like 10 times a second. Im wondering if this is becuase Im using the wrong adaptor? Or is it becuase the power connection is loose inside? Secondly twice today, once yesterday the laptop has completley frozen and the screen completley messed up with wierd lines and random colours etc. The screen seperates up into coloured bars and I have to switch the machine off. Now I know this isnt becuase the screen is disconnecting becuase I opened it up again and the cabeling going into the motherboard from the screen is in solidly, infact it is screwed in. What could this be thats causing the lock-ups? And how do I fix this?

Basically my two questions are:

How do I fix the random lock-ups
Is the power problem to do with the wrong adaptor?

Thanks for all the help, I really need this sorted,

RoachycaL

Aspire 1620

Travelmate 283XC

 

[leezer3]

Unfortunately, the random colors etc. problem is going to be pretty hard to deal with as this is a laptop. I suspect the cause of this is highly likely to be something loose inside the laptop as a result of the dropping, and there is nothing much you can do about it other than sending it back under warranty if applicable. It could also be heat related- Is the laptop very hot when this happens?

The power adaptor should work with no problems, & again its much more likely to be just a loose connection on the motherboard however there is 0.5mm of extra space in the adaptor you are currently using, which could make a difference. Could you borrow a 'correct' adaptor & see what happens?

-Leezer-

 

[RoachycaL]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response - tomorrow Im going to face my fears and open it up again - just to make sure although most of the space in there appears to be taken up by the floppy and cd drive.

About the heat - at the moment the pannel which covers the ram is at school and the Ram is VERY hot, I can only keep my hand on there for 10 seconds max. Thing is - Im not sure how hot its meant to get. I dont think there will still be a warrenty on it to be honest - although I can check on Monday when it was bought. Also I might be able to find the correct adaptor at school on Monday also. Any more help? I would hate to have to give up on this as there is a lot of perfectly working hardware and a very good looking laptop going to waste...

RoachycaL

 

[squiffy]

My Acer runs damn hot, much hotter than it used to. As for the PSU issue, it could be the negative wire that's corroded, my PSU went the same wire (jiggle wire and goes from charging to battery very quickly) Cutting the wire showed the negative was reduced to black wire! Replaced PSU and fine now.

I would think the different PSU's might cause problems as in the lower capacity one won't be able to power the other laptop that requires more current.

 

[RoachycaL]

Thanks - I forgot to mention that the fan on the laptop is always running, which is not the case on the Aspire 1620 3ghz that I own. I was going to ask if anyone could name a piece of hardware other than the cable from the screen that is causing the screen to lock up and go crazy? Tomorrow I'll take a picture of it doing it - luckily it dosnt do it very often so Im free to use the laptop aslong as I keep jiggling the cable when I move around.

RoachycaL

 

[RoachycaL]

*bump*, A bit of good news - the laptop hasnt crashed for 2 days now after I installed some different drivers. Lets hope it continues. Any more help on the overheating?