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CL56 crash - any suggestions?

post #1 of 25
7/13/05 at 11:50am
Thread Starter 
Last night I was dumb enough to run my CL56 until the battery died - didn't notice the warning message and I have the sound turned off. Anyways, when the battery died, it suddenly cut out (quick message about going to standby, I think). Didn't seem like that big of a deal, but when I plugged it in, and even after I fully recharged the battery, it won't come back on. When I push the power button, the power light comes on, there are a few quick clicks (the CD drive), and then, after a second or so... nothing. No screen at all, no further activity (there is a very quiet sound - maybe the fan, but it seems too soft), no reaction to any buttons, nothing. tried running it on battery, on the plug, without the battery insreted, without the CD drive inserted. the only thing left to do without opening the case is trying to remove one or both of the memory cards, I guess.... but if it was a bad memory card, it would at least start the OS load, right?

I'm hoping I haven't killed the thing. Figures that the warranty ran out almost exactly a week ago.

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm at a loss.
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post #2 of 25
7/13/05 at 1:55pm
Very weird. Try letting the battery charge fully before turning it on. I know you are running it off AC, but lets see what happens with a full battery.
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post #3 of 25
7/13/05 at 2:59pm
Thread Starter 
Unfortunately, I've tried that - after my initial attempts to get it to work, I let the battery fully recharge, and then tried to run it both off the battery and off the plug... to no avail. I'll probably try again, though - what have I got to lose?
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post #4 of 25
7/13/05 at 3:06pm
Thread Starter 
I should also mention that I put a CD in to see if it would read (or maybe boot from) the optical drive... the drive spins, but does not appear to read.

I'm really hoping I'm not going to have to send this off for service!
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post #5 of 25
7/13/05 at 3:36pm
sounds like ram or hdd, try removing the hdd first before the ram. if it boots and says no hdd, then put it back in and try it again.

otherwise its definitely the ram. sorry.
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post #6 of 25
7/13/05 at 4:58pm
Are you sure the computer didn't just go into standy by mode? Try to come out of stanby mode and see what happens?
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post #7 of 25
7/13/05 at 5:49pm
if you have 2 x 512 sticks you could try booting w/ one or the other and seeing if one of the sticks is bad
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post #8 of 25
7/13/05 at 7:13pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the suggestions - I tried pulling the HDD, and I tried pulling first one, then the other 512 stick and using each in each slot, etc..... but it didn't change anything. Still no reaction.

As for standby mode... well, I guess I can't say it isn't in that mode, having experienced the standby mode of death in some older desktops - but if this is some sort of standby mode beyond what I'm used to with the laptop (i.e. if you push the power again it wakes up), I have no idea how to recover it.

I'm thinking it is a motherboard issue, unfortunately.
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post #9 of 25
7/13/05 at 7:27pm
that is really strange that it would do that just because you let the battery run dry. i let the battery on my uniwill run dry on a few occasions, not a wise move of course, but as soon as i plugged in or charged the battery and pressed the powre button it turned back on.


if it is not the ram or the hard drive, it might also be the CPU....sounds familiar from what you discuss. Most motherboards give you a generic "beep" to let you know its found the CPU and can communicate, if it doesn't do that, then your CPU is dead probably. If you have another banias/dothan somewhere at hand, i'd suggest trying to plug it in and try that. If not, get a cheapo off ebay or from a store with a good return policy on CPUs so you can try it and return it at no loss to you (less shipping fees)
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post #10 of 25
7/13/05 at 7:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaeva
Last night I was dumb enough to run my CL56 until the battery died - didn't notice the warning message and I have the sound turned off. Anyways, when the battery died, it suddenly cut out (quick message about going to standby, I think). Didn't seem like that big of a deal, but when I plugged it in, and even after I fully recharged the battery, it won't come back on. When I push the power button, the power light comes on, there are a few quick clicks (the CD drive), and then, after a second or so... nothing. No screen at all, no further activity (there is a very quiet sound - maybe the fan, but it seems too soft), no reaction to any buttons, nothing. tried running it on battery, on the plug, without the battery insreted, without the CD drive inserted. the only thing left to do without opening the case is trying to remove one or both of the memory cards, I guess.... but if it was a bad memory card, it would at least start the OS load, right?

I'm hoping I haven't killed the thing. Figures that the warranty ran out almost exactly a week ago.

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm at a loss.
Sounds like the motherboard died. My CL56 did a similar thing about 2 months ago. It just turned off while I wasn't paying attention to it while running on battery and I couldn't get it to turn on again. Luckily it was still in warranty and I sent it back to the vendor, they said something on the mobo died and had to send it back to the Compal service depot to have it worked on. Depending on whether you want to keep it or not you may want to contact your laptop vendor to see where you can send it to have it repaired. Since it's not in warranty, you'll have to shell out for repairs out of your own pocket.
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post #11 of 25
7/13/05 at 8:12pm
This happened to my cousin's CL56 about 2 weeks after he got it. He said one day he pressed the power button, and it acted exactly as you described. It would "turn on," but the OS never booted. He took his back to MWave (under warranty). They said it was a bad mother board. They replaced it and now it works fine.
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post #12 of 25
7/14/05 at 12:22pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I got mine from Mwave, too, and when I emailed their tech department, their first guess was a bad motherboard, so I'm guessing they've seen a few of these. They asked me to send it back to them. Too bad it didn't happen a few weeks ago, when it was still under warranty.
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post #13 of 25
7/15/05 at 7:48am
Wow, I got my CL56 from MWave too...maybe it's a bad batch? Call them up and talk to them. They may be willing to fix it under warranty.
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post #14 of 25
7/15/05 at 6:54pm
hi Jaeva,

a friend of mine owns an acer 291 Lmi (i own one too), wich is basically a compal 51 barebone. It had the exact same problem like your cl56. so i searched the net and found the following info. the cl51 bios is flawed, so it is possible that the bios locks up completly. but it can be easily reseted.

So we opened the hatch on the bottom and took out the rams. now there was a Jumper labeled J1 wich we connected with a screwdriver. this reseted the bios and the cl51 was back to normal. you should remove ac/battery before you do that.

btw acer support told him he should send it in and have the mainboard replaced ;-).

i dont no, if this also works for your cl56, but i think its worth a try.

sry for my bad english. Threepwood
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post #15 of 25
7/15/05 at 7:08pm
I was going to suggest the same thing as Threepwood. I've seen that happen on PC's before (not on a notebook though - not first hand at least) and quite often its just a matter of popping the CMOS battery out for a few minutes and then putting it back in.

So if you can find a way to manually reset the BIOS, that would be worth a shot before you send it away on warranty.
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post #16 of 25
7/16/05 at 11:54am
Thread Starter 
That's an interesting suggestion - I was thinking that there might be a way to reset the BIOS, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I'll look for the jumper. BTW, sorry for the ignorance, but what is the "CMOS" battery?

Thanks
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post #17 of 25
7/16/05 at 1:50pm
Thread Starter 
Threepwood (and PogueMahone) -

Thanks for the suggestion - it worked! Took a bit of hunting to find the J1 jumper under the RAM sticks (it was smaller than I expected), but once I bridged it with a screwdriver it reset the BIOS and the notebook has been revived. Thanks much - you saved me having to send it back! the notebook seems to be running just the same as before it siezed up... maybe a bit slower, but that is probably my imagination.
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post #18 of 25
7/16/05 at 2:14pm
So... if the bios is the problem, would upgrading it prevent future freezes? What is the current bios version for the CL56?
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post #19 of 25
7/16/05 at 2:21pm
im clad that it worked. what you could do now is upgradeing the bios to the newest version. i think they fixed this issue in one of the newer releases. (all spoken for the cl51, but cl56/51 are very similar). the update should prevent the bug from striking again.
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post #20 of 25
7/16/05 at 7:29pm
Thread Starter 
Good suggestion - I'm going to look for an updated BIOS - have to check the various sites - and you're right, there should be an updated CL56 one if there is a CL51 update - there are very few core differences between the two ( the differences seem to be more in the graphics processor, etc.)
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