Laptop won't POST, is it really dead?

[GoStumpy]

Laptop is an Acer Aspire 5355.

I press the power button, the fan starts and the power light blinks twice, off, blinks twice, off... nothing on the screen.

I hold Ctrl Alt Delete and it reboots and showed the big ACER splashscreen, and froze. Requiring me to hold the power button for 5 seconds to do a hard reset. It only did this once, now it's black no matter what, Ctrl Alt Delete does nothing...


I tried putting in a different harddrive, and same thing.

Thoughts on something I can try? I don't have any spare laptop ram to put in it...

Is it garbage?

 

[denis280]

remove the battery. and mains power then hold the power button down for 20 seconds then re-install battery. and see what happens.could be a corrupt bios too.and did you make sure it is dust free.

 

[GoStumpy]

Odd... I found the little battery on the motherboard (I assume the CMOS battery) that had a tab broken off it.. possibly from when I was dusting. I soldered that back on, made sure the battery had contact...

Now when I start it I don't get any blinking lights at all.. the fan is going, the CPU is getting warm, but nothing happens otherwise. Same if I take the HDD out.

I've also tried hooking up an external monitor, and nothing.

So now I'm in the same boat as before, except I don't get the double blinking light

 

[Matt1970]

If your laptop has 2 memory sticks, try them one at a time in either slot.

 

[GoStumpy]

Ok I tried all configurations of memory.. both sticks in both slots and 1 at a time in each..

All configurations led to nothing, not even the green HDD light. When there was no memory in it at all, the green HDD light lit up and stayed that way, and still nothing on the screen.

 

[Mushkins]

I've had an Acer cheapo laptop sitting at my desk for a month that does the exact same thing. Power light blinks twice, and then nothing. Tried all the typical tricks with no success. It's definitely a hardware failure, but its out of warranty and honestly hasn't been worth my time to get a repair quote from Acer (when their website even works properly to fill out the forms). Was only used maybe two or three times in a year.

 

[GoStumpy]

Yeah I'm pretty sure the motherboard is done... not sure why.. I remember when I first got it (to clean it out and fix it) it ran..barely. It would boot into windows sometimes, enough that I was able to save their data... but it got worse and worse and eventually wouldn't boot at all...

Guess that's a telltale sign of motherboard failure

 

[ethmcc93]

have you tried resetting the monitor connection inside the laptop

 

[GoStumpy]

I've tried it hooked up to an external monitor, and nothing happens...

Google isn't giving me much, care to elaborate?

 

[GoStumpy]

Sold it for $30, so no more problem!! whee