Problem with Acer Travelmate power

inchinga

I have an acer travelmate which I bought in December 2005. Recently, the power cable battles to power up the laptop, and it beeps loudly and the power light goes off. It takes lots of positioning of the cable to 'reconnnect' again.

I would like to know if this is a problem with the laptop in general, as I don't see how the power cable could get corrupted. I am thinking of getting a new laptop, but would first like to know whether it's worth fixing this one up.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Marty_J

Power cables get broken all the time. They're always being crammed in, yanked out, trodden on, tripped over, etc.

If you have a friendly computer store nearby, they might try out a different cable for you to see if that fixes the problem.

vyseyboy

I think it's more likely to be a finely broken connector between the power input jack and the motherboard circuitry. It seems to happen all the time to laptops. A really theoretically easy and cheap (10 minutes of someones time, no real "parts" required,) repair for someone handy with a soldering iron - however it usually requires major disassembly and reassembly just to "get at it."

Any computer shop you took it to would likely decide that a new motherboard was the only answer and charge you around £100 for the replacement

A more likely answer would be to take it to an old school hi-fi / TV repair shop, or better yet, a technical friend with an analogue electrical engineering bent. Either way, the most difficult part will be disassembly / reassembly, so get googling for a disaseembly guide for your model and give it to anyone who thinks they can do the soldering.

Try here for starters:
http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_acer.html

Definately worth it though, it should be 100% fixable.

totalsolutions

>A more likely answer would be to take it to an old school hi-fi / TV repair shop, or better yet, a technical friend with an analogue electrical engineering bent

OH, OH, thats me...! South London any good for you?

inchinga

totalsolutions wrote: »

>A more likely answer would be to take it to an old school hi-fi / TV repair shop, or better yet, a technical friend with an analogue electrical engineering bent

OH, OH, thats me...! South London any good for you?

I'm in Twickenham. What about you?

poker_face

First thing to do is check the power lead with a multimeter to see if it has a bad connection, and thus working intermittently. A local repair shop or electrical store like Maplin are usually happy to do this.

totalsolutions

Inchinga, Looking to my left I see I'm in sunny Sutton.

culpepper

i had this with my acer. first i took it apart and desoldered and resoldered the power socket and it did help but it wasnt permanently fixed as the problem came back,then I looked on ebay,found a new socket to replace it (about £7)and when it arrived, soldered it in place. It took an afternoon because I had to disassemble again, desolder the old socket, clean the board,solder the new socket and reassemble but it was a huge learning curve and I have had no problems since, plus my battery now charges correctly to full capacity again. I never soldered anything before this .