Acer Aspire laptop

[rgbrock1]

About a year or so ago, I started a thread posting about problems I had with, what seemed to be at the time, my Acer Aspire laptop waking from "sleep" mode. I had tried everything imaginable to correct the issue: taking the battery out, re-seating components, etc. After awhile I had given up on the thing and left it to its own devices. (No pun intended!)

About a month later, and just for the hell of it, I hit the power button/switch on it and, presto magic, it booted up. I had no further problems with it until recently. Same thing.

And then it dawned on me. I know what is causing it but haven't a clue as to what is causing the cause!

Basically if the temperature outside, or inside the house for that matter, is high with higher levels of humidity it refuses to power on. However, if it's cooler with lower levels of humidity it powers right on.

When I got home from work last night, the Mrs. had attempted to use it but it wouldn't power on. Yesterday was warm and humid in CT. As an experiment, and much to the Mrs. amusement, I stuck the Acer in the refrigerator! I waited about 30 minutes, took it out and just like "magic" it power on.

This morning, warm and humid again and no power on.

So my esteemed fellow PPRuNe-ers, any idea on what might be the cause of this weirdness?

PS: the laptop boots up fine, and regularly in the winter. It's when the first warm and humid days of spring is when it decides to, er, hibernate.

[MacBoero]

There was a time a few years back when several notebook computer manufacturers got burned by a faulty design of graphics chip (GPU). My wife suffered from problems because of it. The GPU from Nvidia allegedly ran far hotter that it was supposed to, so in the case of the wife's HP TX1000 laptop, the fans would run full blast all the time, but ultimately the thermal expansion/contraction of the GPU in relation to its ball grid array on the motherboard caused enough of the joints to fail at certain temperatures the machine would lock up. It would then refused to start up again until the temperature had lowered sufficiently, and presumably the contraction of components closed the fractures in the solder joints.

I wonder if you are suffering from a similar phenomenon?

[rgbrock1]

Mac:

sounds like a possibility. I'm not sure what GPU is inside the Aspire but I can check easily enough.

Thanks for that info. Interesting.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Its an Acer

the motherboards are made to a very specific price point and as a result they have a high failure rate.
Add to that the GPU problem, which also applies to machines with ATi/AMD chipsets as well as nVidia
And further add the fact that Acer made a habit of specifying cheap fake capacitors .......

exactly which Aspire model is it? Should be on the build plate on the underneath

[rgbrock1]

Milo:

The Acer Aspire I have is a model AS7736Z-4088.

I understand what you wrote about cheap-ass components and all BUT it just seems very odd that it works fine when the weather is cooler and less humid but refused to boot up when it's the opposite. Yes, humid and warm weather causes things to expand while cooler/cold weather causes things to contract but system components?

[Milo Minderbinder]

that ones got an Intel chipset so the solder shouldn't be an issue.

I'd guess at bad capacitors - damp weather making them track to earth so causing insufficient voltage to boot the machine

[rgbrock1]

Milo:

Thanks for the info. Bad capacitors does seem quite likely. However, I'm not about to open the thing and try to figure out which capacitor(s) is at fault. I guess I'll just learn to live with the fickle beast. Normally I would just get rid of the thing or leave it on a shelf somewhere to collect dust. But I really like the machine for several reasons the primary being the display: it's a 17" display and crystal clear. Very easy on the eyes.