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Does anyone know how to wake a AS511x with the "black screen of death" bug?

post #1 of 8
2/23/07 at 10:43am
Thread Starter 
I've got an AS5112 (TL50x2, 2Gb, X1600) with which I was very pleased and smug until it intermittently stopped turning on properly. Note that although the sticker says "5112WLMi" the LCD panel has a sticker saying "Aspire 5110", and the bottom says "5110 Series", so I imagine they're all much of a muchness with differing specs.

The CPU fans would spin up, the HDD and DVD-RW would seek, but the display backlight would just remain completely black. Not the "my OS has crashed" kind of screen where the screen looks black but you can still see some kind of backlight: the backlight would simply not come on.

This started off happening intermittently, usually after a system hang (pertaining to ATI's shoddy drivers, incidentally) then it started happening in a bad way, but I usually managed to revive the machine by unplugging the PSU and battery for several hours (a short time period, like 30 minutes, was mysteriously not enough). Now it's happened again and I've yet to revive it.

Now, this isn't an OS or driver issue because it doesn't even POST any more: no ACER screen, no memory check, nothing.

It sounds suspiciously like the bug referred to in the 2.60 BIOS update:

"02. Fix s3/s4/cold boot/warm boot long run test black screen issue."

Now, I've prepared an El Torito boot CD-ROM with the new BIOS and the flashing utility, but I can't flash the bloody thing because I can't see what I'm doing.

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone else have any idea how I can revive this thing in order to flash it?
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post #2 of 8
2/24/07 at 6:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by pygie
I've got an AS5112 (TL50x2, 2Gb, X1600) with which I was very pleased and smug until it intermittently stopped turning on properly. Note that although the sticker says "5112WLMi" the LCD panel has a sticker saying "Aspire 5110", and the bottom says "5110 Series", so I imagine they're all much of a muchness with differing specs. The CPU fans would spin up, the HDD and DVD-RW would seek, but the display backlight would just remain completely black. Not the "my OS has crashed" kind of screen where the screen looks black but you can still see some kind of backlight: the backlight would simply not come on. This started off happening intermittently, usually after a system hang (pertaining to ATI's shoddy drivers, incidentally) then it started happening in a bad way, but I usually managed to revive the machine by unplugging the PSU and battery for several hours (a short time period, like 30 minutes, was mysteriously not enough). Now it's happened again and I've yet to revive it. Now, this isn't an OS or driver issue because it doesn't even POST any more: no ACER screen, no memory check, nothing. It sounds suspiciously like the bug referred to in the 2.60 BIOS update: "02. Fix s3/s4/cold boot/warm boot long run test black screen issue." Now, I've prepared an El Torito boot CD-ROM with the new BIOS and the flashing utility, but I can't flash the bloody thing because I can't see what I'm doing. Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone else have any idea how I can revive this thing in order to flash it?
If you're absolutely sure it's a flash isue, you should be able to see by hooking up an external monitor via the analog video-out D-15 port. I'd be nervous about flashing in this case, but that should allow you to flash from a bootable or the GUI.
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post #3 of 8
2/24/07 at 11:05pm
i haven't had this exact problem, but my acer aspire 1712, when i try to shut it down, simply won't let me. if i turn it off, it turns off for a second or two, then turns back on with a black screen like the one you are talking about. generally, and for some reason, if i wait until all of the status the led's blink (caps lock, num lock, scroll lock) and then hold ctrl+alt+del until it restarts again, it will boot up normally. sounds like there's something else going on with my problem, but you might want to give it a try.
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post #4 of 8
2/26/07 at 7:15am
It looks like I'm not alone. My Aspire 5002wlmi just died yesterday. The last time it booted, I could see the BIOS screen and... suddenly shut down. It doesn't turn on anymore. When I press the power button, the fan spins, the HD led blinks once, the DVD driver makes a noise and the power led keeps blinking. That's all. Acer online support suggests removing the battery and disconnecting the power cable, holding the power button for 15-20 seconds than connecting the power cable again. I think they forgot to tell me to pray or to jump 3 times or so. If anyone had a similar problem or know how to fix it, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.
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post #5 of 8
2/26/07 at 7:16am
It looks like I'm not alone. My Aspire 5002wlmi just died yesterday. The last time it booted, I could see the BIOS screen and... suddenly shut down. It doesn't turn on anymore. When I press the power button, the fan spins, the HD led blinks once, the DVD driver makes a noise and the power led keeps blinking. That's all. Acer online support suggests removing the battery and disconnecting the power cable, holding the power button for 15-20 seconds than connecting the power cable again. I think they forgot to tell me to pray or to jump 3 times or so. If anyone had a similar problem or know how to fix it, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.
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post #6 of 8
2/26/07 at 9:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by farj
It looks like I'm not alone. My Aspire 5002wlmi just died yesterday. The last time it booted, I could see the BIOS screen and... suddenly shut down. It doesn't turn on anymore. When I press the power button, the fan spins, the HD led blinks once, the DVD driver makes a noise and the power led keeps blinking. That's all. Acer online support suggests removing the battery and disconnecting the power cable, holding the power button for 15-20 seconds than connecting the power cable again. I think they forgot to tell me to pray or to jump 3 times or so. If anyone had a similar problem or know how to fix it, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.
Have you tried booting with an external monitor? This really sounds like a video hardware problem, or maybe a buggy-written bios. What a crime that would be. And Acer support sound like they're hiding something. How old is your laptop, and does the hard-drive spin up or make any activity noise when you try to boot? No beep code from bios when it tries to boot?
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post #7 of 8
2/27/07 at 7:40am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by pharlaptop
Have you tried booting with an external monitor? This really sounds like a video hardware problem, or maybe a buggy-written bios. What a crime that would be.
And Acer support sound like they're hiding something.
How old is your laptop, and does the hard-drive spin up or make any activity noise when you try to boot? No beep code from bios when it tries to boot?

Hi guys; sorry for my absence, but it's harder than usual to post from home because, well, my laptop is dead

Thanks for your suggestions. I haven't managed to connect an external monitor yet, because I haven't gotten round to bringing one home yet, but I will do. However, I suspect it's not just the monitor, because the HDD access patterns aren't consistent with a normal boot, so it's not simply booting without the LCD enabled.

However, I have found the following:

- Leaving the laptop with battery and PSU disconnected for 12 hours or more allows me to boot around 80% of the time. If I try earlier than that and it doesn't boot, then I've blown it and need to wait another 12 hours. In other words, 12 hours need to pass from the last time I apply power, not from the last successful boot.

- The 2.60 BIOS seems NOT to fix the issue. I managed to flash the BIOS on the few occasions the machine was kind enough to boot up, and the behaviour hasn't improved. It's not "bricked" because it still boots up from time to time, but it still fails to boot most of the time.

- I have a vague feeling that the BIOS option called (from memory; I don't have the machine in front of me right now) "Quiet Boot" affects this issue. When I had it set to True (booting shows the light-coloured Acer splash screen and a blue progress bar at the bottom) I managed to get around four consecutive successful reboots without having to wait 12 hours. When I changed it back to "False" (booting shows the black screen with the memory test) it stopped booting. This could be coincidence, but it's pretty fishy.

- There is also a BIOS option that affects which display is initialised at boot. I set this to "Both" instead of the default "Auto", because I don't trust the BIOS to get it right. I don't know if this helped anything, but it did coincide with the multiple consecutive boots I mentioned above.

- I found some mention on other fora about holding or pressing the little rubber screen switch (left of the power key) to enable a boot to succeed, but this did nothing for me at all. Nor did a Ctrl-Alt-Delete mentioned by another poster on this thread.

Lastly, on the last couple of successful boots, the trackpad seems not to be working. It's not a driver issue, as I've also tried this with a Linux Kubuntu LiveCD which tends to autodetect everything pretty well, and the trackpad is inoperative. I feel an RMA coming along.

I purchased this machine from amazon.com, shipped from tigerdirect.com. Has anyone gone through this procedure before? Do I go to amazon, tigerdirect, or Acer themselves?
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post #8 of 8
2/27/07 at 7:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pharlaptop
Have you tried booting with an external monitor? This really sounds like a video hardware problem, or maybe a buggy-written bios. What a crime that would be. And Acer support sound like they're hiding something. How old is your laptop, and does the hard-drive spin up or make any activity noise when you try to boot? No beep code from bios when it tries to boot?
I haven't tried booting with an external monitor yet. I bought it on August 2005. I can't hear any activity from the hard drive: its led only blinks once, like it was trying to boot, then I can hear the DVD (actually ex-DVD, because it stopped reading/writing DVDs few weeks ago, it was only reading/writing CDs) trying to boot, then nothing else. No beep codes. Just the noisy fan. I've been told it may be the motherboard and that it's too expensive to be replaced. And that it'd be better to sell the parts and buy a new notebook. Thanks, Franklin.
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