Help! Acer laptop won't turn on!

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fatfree

n00b
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
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I purchased an Acer 4830T a little over a year ago (what a coincidence, my warranty just ran out almost a week ago, ain't that always the problem), and it recently completely stopped working. It will not turn on. I have tested the charger, and it is working fine.

Similarly, the battery seems to be working: when I turned it over and unscrewed the bottom, plugged the charger in, the little light indicator on the bottom of the laptop shined blue, which usually means that the battery is fully charged. The funny thing is, when I turned it back over and tried pressing the power button, the blue battery indicator went out completely. I tried this several times, with the same exact results every single time (turning it over resulted in blue battery indicator, turning it over the light remains on, but when I press the power button, it goes out).

Now, I did my research and learned that this could be a sign of static buildup within the computer, to which the general remedy is taking out the battery, removing the charger and pressing the power button for about 3/4 of a minute. I tried this, it was a huge pain in the ass because for whatever reason, Acer decided that it would be an intelligent design choice to make the battery internal and extremely hard to remove. Nothing happened, it still refuses to turn on.

Do you guys have any suggestions? I am completely stumped.

Edit: Minor update: pressing the power button after inserting the power cable causes the power button to light up for ~1 second, this only happens after the first time the cable is inserted (i.e., pressing it again doesn't have any effect, but taking it out, putting it back in, and pressing it has the described effect).
 
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That doesn't sound like very much fun. I don't have any ideas but hopefully someone else can offer a suggestion. Good luck.
 
My wife has an Acer laptop, not sure what model. Her battery went kaput a month after the warranty was up, and it had the same symptoms and I remember going through the same steps you're describing to troubleshoot. In the end we took a wild shot in the dark, ordered a new battery, and it solved all the problems.

Maybe do some more research or see if anyone else here has any other suggestions besides throwing money at it, but I'd be willing to bet its just your battery.

A question: did you notice it struggling to charge before it went belly-up? Our battery died a slow death over maybe a month or so.
 
jamsomito said:
My wife has an Acer laptop, not sure what model. Her battery went kaput a month after the warranty was up, and it had the same symptoms and I remember going through the same steps you're describing to troubleshoot. In the end we took a wild shot in the dark, ordered a new battery, and it solved all the problems.

Maybe do some more research or see if anyone else here has any other suggestions besides throwing money at it, but I'd be willing to bet its just your battery.

A question: did you notice it struggling to charge before it went belly-up? Our battery died a slow death over maybe a month or so.
Click to expand...

It seemed to have been working fine, I didn't notice any differences in battery time.

Additionally, if the battery was dead, wouldn't taking it out and using it plugged in work?
 
fatfree said:
It seemed to have been working fine, I didn't notice any differences in battery time.

Additionally, if the battery was dead, wouldn't taking it out and using it plugged in work?
Click to expand...

laptop should boot up on A/C power even if the battery is not present. Have you tried another power brick?

Modern PC design includes a PWR GOOD/PSU ON signal that comes from the PSU to the mainboard. If that signal is not present a faulty power brick may "test" good but fail when being used. How did you test the brick?
 
I have had the same problem on a couple of laptops before.

Have you tried clearing the CMOS settings by removing all power to the laptop for a minute or two? That means making sure it is unplugged from the wall, removing the main battery, and removing the motherboard battery.

The motherboard battery is usually a small CR2032 button cell. It is usually wrapped in a plastic shrink sleeve and connected to the motherboard via wires and a header plug. Of course this will vary depending on manufacturer and model. Either open up your laptop or see if you can find a service manual for it first.
 
Acer tend to have shorting points on the motherboard too for the CMOS.
 
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