Acer 5332, No POST, Power light comes on then off

Ok So a client has gave me her laptop which has the following symptoms


Press the Power button- Fan spins up, for around 5 seconds, the 2 Power LEDs light up (one on the power button, and one in the bottom left) then after about 3 seconds the lights go off. Following this the laptop will then continue to light up these LEDs for around 3 seconds (this time without any fans) and then off again, the laptop remains in a continuous cycle until the power cord is removed.


The laptops screen does not flicker and i am hearing no Beepcodes.

There is no post, and no sign of lfe.

I have so far tried, Bios Reset by jumping the motherboard, trying to boot with no other components plugged in, Ive stripped the laptop to bear bones including the screen and reseated all the connectors,

Re set the CPU with artic silver.

Still no life from the poor little bugger,

Im fast running out of options and would appreciate any help i can get, ive even tried an external display, still no love

these are sad times when a man cant fix a laptop by taking it apart and trying EVERYTHING.

Look forward to your responses

Billy

 

Greetings, wilddean.

Have you tried the RAM dance (reseat modules, swap, use only one stick, etc.)?

Also, have you tried all of the procedures with the battery unit removed?

 

Yeah tried ram swapping and all without battery, still not getting any beep coes or post, would of t hought itd go to post without the RAM anyway

 

That ain't good.

Looks like you've tried everything I would have suggested. There is a BIOS update for that model that addresses a 'Fixes system unbootable' issue located here, but I can't see where that's applicable to your machine if you can't even get it to POST.

I don't know - in lieu of a motherboard swap, you may be looking at a dead laptop.

 

Cheers for the quick replies, last order before i rule the MB as dead ima try and emergency bios recovery if i can figure out how to do it with Acer,

Once again thank you, and if you have ne other ideas would be greatly appreciated

 

Haven't looked at it, but you may be able to get a Flash in using a USB stick (if the machine doesn't have a floppy drive).

Good luck - keep us posted.

 

Quick update, the Pc responses when i put it into CRM (ESC and FN) but still no life hmmm to try n ething would be a success

 

Acer's use an AMI BIOS. I've done blind recoveries with them before and it's not too difficult. You'll have to get the most recent BIOS from the Acer website then follow these directions (it says to use a floppy, but I've performed it successfully with a USB flash drive, same procedure):

AMI has an embedded recovery technique in the 'boot block' of the BIOS. In the event that the BIOS becomes corrupt the boot block can be used to restore the BIOS to a working state. The routine is called when the 'system block' of the BIOS is empty or corrupt. The restore routine when called will access the floppy drive (1.44Mb floppy disk drive) looking for a file named AMIBOOT.ROM.

This is the reason the floppy drive light comes on and the drive appears to be in use. If the file (AMIBOOT.ROM) is found it is loaded into the 'system block' of the BIOS to replace the corrupted information.

To restore your BIOS copy the most recent version of your motherboards BIOS file to a floppy diskette and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM. The diskette does not need to be bootable or contain a flash utility. It will access the floppy from 2-5 minutes the system will beep four times. Remove the floppy diskette from the drive and reboot the computer. if when you turn on the system it does not try to access the floppy, press and hold the 'CTRL' and 'HOME' keys at the same time. This will force the system (assuming the 'boot block' isn't corrupted) to access the flopy and look for the AMIBOOT.ROM file.

Note: 12345678.BIN represents the name of your BIOS.

Step by Step:


1. Rename the desired AMI BIOS file to AMIBOOT.ROM and save it on a blank floppy disk. e.g. Rename 12345678.ROM to AMIBOOT.ROM

2. Insert this floppy disk in the floppy drive. Turn On the system

3. If no floppy access occurs press and hold Ctrl-Home to force update. Follow insructions on the screen and it will read the AMIBOOT.ROM file and recover the BIOS from the A drive.

4. When 4 beeps are heard you may remove the floppy disk.

5. Restart the computer.

Hope this helps!