Dead Acer laptop advice

grumpycrab

Symptoms :- no BIOS;
And with the following removed :- DVD drive, hard drive (contents fine BTW), memory, battery...it powers up - I can hear the fan - but nothing on the screen (or VGA connect) - flickers briefly then nothing.

Assumption:- fault on motherboard; I've tried a different brick. Laptop only 3 years old and in v. good condition.

Any ideas? I assume without any RAM it should do something. No beeps. I don't like (cheap) Acer.

donniedarko

Did you attempt a BIOS recovery before anything else?

System

Take cover off bottom, find the CPU fan, unbolt it, remove the carpet covering the heatsink. Re-assemble.

If I'd had a quid for every one of these I'd done about that age I'd have bought MSE myself.

grumpycrab

donniedarko wrote: »

Did you attempt a BIOS recovery before anything else?

Link please.

grumpycrab

Tarambor wrote: »

remove the carpet covering the heatsink.

Its as clean as a whistle.

DavidP24

I think the lack of RAM should be your first port of call.

grumpycrab

DavidP24 wrote: »

I think the lack of RAM should be your first port of call.

It has RAM -sorry- badly explained; with RAM it cycles the CD drive every 1sec at startup (nothing on the screen); without any RAM it does nothing (except in both cases the CPU fan comes on); just wondering if there's something obvious I've missed. Looks like a power fault on the motherboard?

dj1471

It does sound like something fundamental. A desktop PC would beep with memory removed but laptops are different animals and may not behave the same way.

Try removing the WiFi adaptor and anything else unpluggable to further eliminate possible causes. Failing to boot into the BIOS is often caused by CPU faults so try removing and re-seating the CPU.

donniedarko

grumpycrab wrote: »

Link please.

Link to what??

grumpycrab

donniedarko wrote: »

Link to what??

How to do a "BIOS recovery".

DavidP24

If you have no ram just how do you expect ANY code to run, you would be lucky to get POST to work.