Acer laptop non-respnsive
 

I've got an Acer Aspire 7736Z-4088 laptop which is a bit over 2 years old now. Until recently it has been a really nice and dependable machine to own.

Over the past weekend I opened the lid - having put it in sleep mode a day or two before - and nothing happened. So I held down the power button for a few seconds thinking it would power off the laptop. Nothing. Blue LED light stayed on. I unplugged it, took the battery out and still nothing. Oh crap, I thought, another one bites the dust.

Later on in the day and out of curiosity I hit the power button.
Lo and behold you sprung back into action. Picked up right were it left off prior to being placed in the aforementioned sleep mode.

Last night I attempted to use it and, once again, it was unresponsive. Went through the same procedure as before: hold down power button, unplug and remove the battery. Nothing.

It's running Windows 7 64-bit.

Am I off the mark here by assuming this is definitely a hardware problem? I'm thinking perhaps the motherboard?

Any ideas, suggestions and/or comments?

My immediate thought was - software problem - but what do I know?

Sounds like motherboard to me

its an Acer, and Acer motherboards are very prone to failure.
They use cheap failure-prone components, and the multilayer boards are very prone to deliminating
As a rule, they are best avoided - especially the laptops
Of the failed laptops I see, 70% or thereabouts are Acers. Ironically the older ones with single layer boards are more reliable

Repairable? Possibly if you can find someone who has an "in" with Acer can get spares from them - possibly back doored from the USA or China

Win 7 sleep problems are well documented.

Guide Methods to Resolve and Diagnose Sleep Problems with Windows 7 | Missing Remote

Milo:

Thanks for the info: I feared as much. Actually, I was under the impression that Acer systems - desktops, netbooks and laptops - were very reliable. I'm beginning to rethink that. The laptop in question was bought in April 2010. Thus it's out of warranty as I did not buy an extended one.

Perhaps I'll just take the hard drive out of it and install it in my Dell laptop. Both laptops use 2.5" 5400rpm SATA drives so compatibility shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks again.

Try switching it off when you've finished instead of putting it to sleep and see if it works ok, if it does don't use sleep mode.

Sprogget:

Thanks for that info and I would really prefer my laptop's problem to be one of those sleep mode issues. And the article you linked to has some good poop in it. However, it also assume a system which is not currently in sleep mode. (Or in a coma like mine is.)
Perhaps I'll giggle waking a Windows 7 from sleep!

green granite:

Absolutely. If I can get the damn thing out of sleep mode it will never sleep again! Nor hibernate for that matter.

Just have to figure how to get it out of that sleep mode.

There was a fairly widely publicised laptop reliability survey a couple of years ago which showed Acer as one of the worst; AFAIR Asus, Apple and Toshiba got the top three slots with 1/2 to 1/3 of the failure rate of the worst manufacturers. My Acer laptop did OK for three years other than locking up when the CPU fan filled with dust so it overheated, but then the keys began to fall off the keyboard so I replaced it with a Tosh. I'm sure I had some similar problems with the Acer refusing to wake up while running XP, but in that case I think Windows gave an error message and let me reboot.

the problem with surveys is that the biggest companies by definition will get more problems reported, and Acer are in the worlds top three or four.
However, having said that, the number of Acer laptops I've seen fail at around 14 months due to motherboard issues is far higher than you would expect, even given their high sales volume. I don't see anywhere near the same number of HPs or Dells, who are equally as big
Its almost as if the the things are on a timer - two months after the warranty expires, they expire
The same also applies to the Acer subsidiaries:
Acer, Packard Bell, Gateway, E-machines, Ei-System - they share components

The Acer group machines are very much built to a price - with all the implications that phrase brings


Ironically just to prove that nothing is absolute - I'm typing this on a 5-year old Aspire 9300 which a customer decided to scrap due to a failed hard drive (and I removated). As I said earlier, the older models were better

"then the keys began to fall off the keyboard so I replaced it with a Tosh"

that could have been easily fixed- Acer keyboards tend to be cheap and easily available

Milo:

Just a thought. If the motherboard in my Acer has gone belly up would the power button still glow blue even though, for now, it does nothing to power the machine up? The power button is glowing LED blue, as well as the indicator for the battery which is also glowing blue. I would have thought with a faulty motherboard nothing would light up? (sorry for the seeming ignorant questions but I'm a mainframe kinda guy!!!!)

thats actually quite a common symptom of a failed Acer laptop

Its charging, the board is live, it just wont actually start up

I didn't realise that. But the laptop and my desktop machine were getting outdated and I needed a new gaming and video editing machine anyway, so I either paid $1000 for a decent laptop or $1000 for a new desktop machine.

Acer laptop non-respnsive
 

Some acer laptops have an area in front of the fan that gets. Blocked with fluff . This causes overheating and hence issues . Take the panel off the bottom and check the fan is clean and turning etc !

FWIW theres a copy of the service manual for that machine at
Acer Aspire 7736Z | Acer Aspire 7540 Service Guide though theres no obvious way of downloading it

The original will be on the passworded dealers-only part of Acers website

Thanks Milo, for the service guide link.

And it can be downloaded via the download for free link next to the Owl icon!!!!

http://www.manualowl.com/images/manu...nload_free.gif

can't see the wood for the trees...missed that among all the spamvertising links

The next time it's running, change the action on lid close from sleep to hibernate, and see if it works like that. If so, it's a software issue. When you say it won't start, do you mean you get absolutely no activity, if so, see if the lid switch is sticky.

If you're a handsome prince, you could try kissing it....:E