Need some laptop RMA advice

[Ancalagon44]

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased an Acer Spin One SP111-31-C039. It came with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. I decided to upgrade this myself to 4GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD.

I received the laptop and started installing Windows without doing any installation. The laptop would not turn on without the power cable. I plugged the power cable in, installed Windows. As soon as I removed the power cable, the laptop died. Again this was before any upgrades or even opening it. I turned it back on, and it seemed to run okay from battery. It seemed to not need the power cable.

I then proceeded to install the upgrades, both of them. However, after this, the laptop would not run from battery at all. It would run fine from the AC adaptor. In the BIOS, I could see the new hardware so it was installed properly. I switched back to the stock hardware - 2GB of RAM and the 500GB hard drive. Again, it still would not run from battery. It would boot into Windows and everything worked fine. I did not mess up the upgrades. But, it would not run from battery at all.

I contacted the vendor and arranged to have the laptop returned. They replaced it with a new one. They did this without inspecting the old one, so I don't know for 100% certain that everything is okay with the RMA.

So I now had the replacement notebook and again I installed Windows on the stock hardware. After the installation was finished, I unplugged the power cable. As soon as I did that, the laptop hibernated or something. The screen went dark but it did not shut down. I was able to get back into Windows. I restarted the machine twice on battery power to make sure that the battery was okay. I then performed the upgrade again. However, the same issue occurred - the battery ceased to work despite me not touching it at all.

I was even able to install Windows onto the new SSD. However, the battery still does not function at all. If I unplug the power cable, the laptop shuts off instantly. Windows detects the battery and says it is plugged in but not charging.

I have tried the following:
PIN battery reset (two or three times)
Plugging in and unplugging the charger
Removing the Microsoft ACPI Control Method Battery from the Batteries interface and adding it back again
Swapped back to the stock hardware - battery still does not work

I'm really out of ideas here. I don't know how doing a simple upgrade can cause a laptop's battery to break completely, when the battery was not touched at all. Not unplugged. Bear in mind that this battery was not designed to be user replaceable.

I have a few options:
1. Put the stock parts back in and RMA this one, but get a refund instead of a replacement.
2. Put the stock parts in and take the laptop to a service centre close to me. They might fix it under warranty.
3. Leave the upgraded parts in and take the laptop to a service centre close to me. They might or might not fix it under warranty. Most likely they will say that me doing the upgrades broke the battery somehow.

I just want the damn thing to work. The whole experience doesn't leave me with a lot of confidence in the Acer brand, because if the thing breaks after a simple upgrade, well, how reliable can it be? At this point I'd probably even be willing to pay the money to fix it as long as it wasn't too much.

I do notice that despite the laptop being quite new, it is already discontinued. And I have seen one other report of a guy having a similar issue only he did not upgrade it at all. Battery just died.

 

[mxnerd]

Did you even fully charge the battery?

 

[Ancalagon44]

Yes, it was fully charged. As a matter of fact, it came fully charged out of the box. I did eventually find the solution.

There is a switch that will disconnect the battery as soon as the case is opened. The problem is, this switch then does not get pressed down again when the case is closed. It looks like there are two loose little rubber tabs that come off. There is a larger rubber pad that stays put, but there are also these thin little guys that come loose. My guess is that they are necessary for the battery to function.

So you open the case, these thin little rubber tabs fall out, and you have no idea what they are for or where they came from. Good thing I didn't throw them away. When you then close the case again, your laptop now does not work and you have no idea why. Acer, was this designed to make people use your service centres and give you extra money? This makes them a lot less serviceable if you don't know about this little trick.

So how did I fix it? I folded some paper in half and stuck it on top of the rubber pad (which is too short by the way) with sticky tape.

Terrible engineering and probably the last time I will buy an Acer.

Some more detail on what Acer did since I am not sure I have explained it well.

On the motherboard, near the ram, is a switch. When this switch is pressed down, the battery works. When the switch is not pressed down, the battery does not work. On the case, there is a plastic box above this button. Inside the plastic box is a rubber pad. The rubber pad is too short to go all the way to the top of the plastic box. The box is maybe 8mm by 8mm, something like that. So is the rubber pad.

With just the rubber pad in the plastic box, there is a gap between the rubber pad and the switch. When you close the lid, the rubber pad does not press the switch and the battery does not work. There needs to be something else in between the rubber pad and the switch for it to work. I believe that something else is two rubber/plastic tabs, about 1mm wide and 8mm long. I am not sure how exactly they would fit in, but they come loose when you open the case. And after you open the case, the battery will not work again unless you know about this little trick.

 

[mxnerd]

Yes, it was fully charged.

Glad you found the solution.

Without product at hand, any suggestion very likely will be useless.

 

[UsandThem]

Terrible engineering and probably the last time I will buy an Acer.

My first computer I ever bought back in the 90's was an Acer. It died on day 15 (1 day past where I could have taken it back to Best Buy for an exchange). It was sent off to Acer's RMA department, and I didn't get it back for almost 4 months.

Then in 2011, I bought a Acer laptop with really nice specs on sale. It was dead out of the box. I personally would never consider them again.

 

[mxnerd]

I would not buy an Acer product again either.

Bought an Acer mini PC years ago and the power button must be pressed at a certain angle to power it on.

Well, apparently the issue is not only that.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've had an Acer mini-ITX i3-2100 PC since 2011 for my music jukebox and it is still humming along without problems. It's tiny and was near-silent but has gotten a little louder after 6+ years. I could probably fix that by removing the heatsink, cleaning it, and adding new thermal paste.

My new 2017 work PC is also an Acer. After a month it stopped recognizing the NVME SSD boot drive (intel 600P) and they made us RMA it. Which was stupid since apparently all it needed was a BIOS upgrade -- we got back the same PC with the BIOS fix. Aside from that it is well-designed and near silent.

On balance I'd buy another Acer if I needed a prebuilt. For gaming I build my own.

 

[Elixer]

So I now had the replacement notebook and again I installed Windows on the stock hardware. After the installation was finished, I unplugged the power cable. As soon as I did that, the laptop hibernated or something. The screen went dark but it did not shut down. I was able to get back into Windows. I restarted the machine twice on battery power to make sure that the battery was okay. I then performed the upgrade again. However, the same issue occurred - the battery ceased to work despite me not touching it at all.

I was even able to install Windows onto the new SSD. However, the battery still does not function at all. If I unplug the power cable, the laptop shuts off instantly. Windows detects the battery and says it is plugged in but not charging.

What do you mean you installed Windows?
Are you saying it didn't come with Windows already installed? Is this a refurbed unit? Where you buy it from?

If everything works correctly "out of the box", then, lots of times the OEMs (acer..dell..) have custom drivers that are needed and those don't come with the standard Windows installer.

However, it seems that the battery is the issue here, could just be a bad batch of batteries.
I have seen lots of machines that say the battery is fine, but, you pull the plug, and the machine dies because the battery was not fine at all.

 

[mxnerd]

Seems a South Africa model. Maybe Acer only sells some models without OS there?

Or maybe he meant was Windows initial setup?

 

[Ancalagon44]

It came with Windows installed on the 500GB drive. I reinstalled Windows onto the 120GB SSD. That is why I had to reinstall.

I could have cloned the drive, but it gave me the opportunity to remove all of the bloatware that Acer would have no doubt installed.

The battery was not bad, it was that little switch that was the problem