Acer Aspire 5535 black screen of death

worldwheeler

I don't have any hide options ticked, so all files are shown.
The usb stick shows just three files.

NiftyDigits

Did you untick that option or not? That option is always ticked by default. So you would have to untick it for it not to be ticked.

Perhaps you will need to make a Bootable drive manually.

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Did you untick that option or not? That option is always ticked by default. So you would have to untick it for it not to be ticked.

Perhaps you will need to make a Bootable drive manually.

So do I tick the empty box then tick it again to remove it again, computers really are the dumbest things in world.
How do you manually make a bootable drive?

Am I using a 32 or 64 bit bios, the acer is a 64bit cpu running a 32bit OS?

NiftyDigits

Anyway, you have a PM with different options>

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Anyway, you have a PM with different options>

Thanks for all your help.
Finally fixed the laptop after taking it completely apart and changing the CMOS battery. Great design feature by Acer to bury a battery with a finite life in the depths of the machine.

NiftyDigits

Glad that you are up and running. OS installed and activated?

worldwheeler

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Glad that you are up and running. OS installed and activated?

Spoke too soon. Started about 6 times and then back to black screen nothing. I spoke to a bod in a computer repair center who said acer motherboards very often develop faults, and it seems you can not get replacement motherboards. Probably because acer have not developed a faultless board and what ever they would supply as a replacement would be prone to the same fault.
I have read about other laptops being brought back from black screen of death by removing a resistor, R138, but the aspre 5535 does not seem to have this resistor on the motherboard.
Ho hum back to square one.

cliffandjayne

Had this problem also and was just about to throw laptop out and found an answer on another forum.

The fix is relatively easy (i.e. black screen, but fan and led lights on computer working). You don't need to be a technician to fix this. This is basically a plain english repeat of what I learned from a technician's post elsewhere (he deserves all the credit). It absolutely worked. I believe the problem stems from the little cheap piece of foam on the gpu (graphics processor chip) wearing out over time. The heatsink system then ceases to function properly. As a result you get black screen on startup. To fix:

Step 1: go to Ebay (or elswhere) and order some copper shims (they are just little squares of copper that conduct heat efficiently). I put 2.5 mm thickness of shims on the gpu (i.e. one 1.5 mm thick shim+ one 1mm thick shim). I put one 1 mm thick shim on the cpu chip. (that's 3 shims total). Also order some thermal grease.

Step 2: open up the bottom access cover of the computer, then remove the "fan and heatsink" from the computer (ez, 4 screws; ie. the fan and heatsink are permanently attached to each other, unplug the fan's miniplug)

Step 3: you will see 2 chips that were covered by the heatsink. The smaller one is the gpu, the bigger one is the cpu. Discard the little piece of foam that sits on the gpu chip (it's worn out).

Step 4: simply stack the two shims as noted in Step 1 on the gpu, and the one shim as noted in Step 1 on the cpu. That's basically the trick. Easy. BUT: before doing so, make sure you have applied thermal grease to ALL the contact surfaces (between the chips and shims, between the two shims over the gpu, between the shim and heatsink).

Step 5: screw back "fan and heatsink" securely. Excess thermal grease will ooze out between contact surfaces. A little bit oozing out shouldn't cause any problem.

Step 6: keep the fan unplugged for now, keep the computer upside down, turn on power and let the heatsink get hot for 10 minutes. This consolidates your new heat diversion system (with the grease and shims). Turn off computer. Let everything cool for 20 minutes. Plug fan in. Startup computer. It should work.
I found on day 1 startup success was now 50% of the time. By day 2 startup success was now 100% of the time.

This forum answer was written by someone else so they get all the credit...

I tried this today, wife had some copper sheet as she makes jewellery and bought heatsink paste from maplins £2.99.
It worked first time
, when I took fan out paper gasket was as described all shredded but now all fixed and running again.

bluesnake

cliffandjayne wrote: »

Had this problem also and was just about to throw laptop out and found an answer on another forum.

The fix is relatively easy (i.e. black screen, but fan and led lights on computer working). You don't need to be a technician to fix this. This is basically a plain english repeat of what I learned from a technician's post elsewhere (he deserves all the credit). It absolutely worked. I believe the problem stems from the little cheap piece of foam on the gpu (graphics processor chip) wearing out over time. The heatsink system then ceases to function properly. As a result you get black screen on startup. To fix:

Step 1: go to Ebay (or elswhere) and order some copper shims (they are just little squares of copper that conduct heat efficiently). I put 2.5 mm thickness of shims on the gpu (i.e. one 1.5 mm thick shim+ one 1mm thick shim). I put one 1 mm thick shim on the cpu chip. (that's 3 shims total). Also order some thermal grease.

Step 2: open up the bottom access cover of the computer, then remove the "fan and heatsink" from the computer (ez, 4 screws; ie. the fan and heatsink are permanently attached to each other, unplug the fan's miniplug)

Step 3: you will see 2 chips that were covered by the heatsink. The smaller one is the gpu, the bigger one is the cpu. Discard the little piece of foam that sits on the gpu chip (it's worn out).

Step 4: simply stack the two shims as noted in Step 1 on the gpu, and the one shim as noted in Step 1 on the cpu. That's basically the trick. Easy. BUT: before doing so, make sure you have applied thermal grease to ALL the contact surfaces (between the chips and shims, between the two shims over the gpu, between the shim and heatsink).

Step 5: screw back "fan and heatsink" securely. Excess thermal grease will ooze out between contact surfaces. A little bit oozing out shouldn't cause any problem.

Step 6: keep the fan unplugged for now, keep the computer upside down, turn on power and let the heatsink get hot for 10 minutes. This consolidates your new heat diversion system (with the grease and shims). Turn off computer. Let everything cool for 20 minutes. Plug fan in. Startup computer. It should work.
I found on day 1 startup success was now 50% of the time. By day 2 startup success was now 100% of the time.

This forum answer was written by someone else so they get all the credit...

I tried this today, wife had some copper sheet as she makes jewellery and bought heatsink paste from maplins £2.99.
It worked first time
, when I took fan out paper gasket was as described all shredded but now all fixed and running again.

My friend has a similar issue with her Acer (apparently quite a common issue), that it works for 10 mins then the back screen. I've done the bios upgrade. Now I have to take the thing to bits

Here is your thermal paste only fix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUGLUQM7zk

In more extreme cases sometimes the solder needs to be reflow the solder around the GPU using preferably a hot air soldering iron station, but at a pinch with shielding and careful application with a hot air gun also works as per links below. Some people claim on youtube have apparently fixed Acer the removable GPU boards by wrapping them in foil and placing them in the oven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hba5Ad879cI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBy7rOiQw18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4yJ4fpJig

worldwheeler

bluesnake wrote: »

My friend has a similar issue with her Acer (apparently quite a common issue), that it works for 10 mins then the back screen. I've done the bios upgrade. Now I have to take the thing to bits

Here is your thermal paste only fix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUGLUQM7zk

In more extreme cases sometimes the solder needs to be reflow the solder around the GPU using preferably a hot air soldering iron station, but at a pinch with shielding and careful application with a hot air gun also works as per links below. Some people claim on youtube have apparently fixed Acer the removable GPU boards by wrapping them in foil and placing them in the oven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hba5Ad879cI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBy7rOiQw18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4yJ4fpJig

I dismantled my acer5535, ran it with no memory; no CPU; no HDD; no fan. Let it get hot for about15min. Shut it down and reassembled it. Yippee, it started up. Did a couple of restarts after updates and all fine. Then shut down and started back up a few minutes later......NOTHING---black screen back. So disassembled again, pulled the CMOS battery and replaced it. Yippee, started again. Shut it down ....and.....back to black screen. Disassembled did the heat gun reflow on the GPU....and ... it started up again. Shut it down and started back up again.... black screen is back.
This is really annoying as I never ran games on it, always ran on mains power with no battery installed, had the CPU limited to 99% max functioning. All of which should mean the chances of overheating are extremely small, yet I have black screen of death. I have researched and found that the motherboard used had a design issue and some of the solder used had a production issue. Basically Acer and built a machine that had a fatal flaw in it, bit like BOAC and the Comet jetliner with square windows.
Never got to up date BIOS as it returned to black screen too quickly. Acer are less than helpful and as I remember want you to phone a extortionate premium rate help line to try to fix a problem that they built into the machine.
Going to try the reflow once more, what the heck!