Laptop has died! Uhoh!

[3N1GM4]

Ok, I will try to keep this brief, but please respond with questions if you need more detail in order to help me.

I have had my Acer Aspire 9420 for a couple of years now I think and it's been pretty good up until now, no real problems. Then out of the blue the other night, while watching some streaming video online, the screen just went black and I couldn't get it to come back. It was as if the battery had died (although it was plugged in at the time) and I had to use the power button to do a hard shutdown.

When I then rebooted, I got one of two behaviours:

- The BIOS and Acer splash screen appeared, but with lines of various colours down them, or other artefacts on the screen, before it tried to boot into windows and then after the Windows loading screen either BSODed on me (very fast so I couldn't read it) or just left me with a blank screen and no response to any keypresses, as well as no HDD activity, resulting in me having no option but to hard shutdown again.

OR

- It started up, but with patches of black and white on the screen which slowly alternated, as if the screen had been smacked or something. Very hard to describe, but it basically slowly pulsed from black to white and back again repeatedly, with patches of varying greyscale on the screen, also indefinitely and until I hard shutdown again.

Since leaving it overnight, I can now get it as far as getting just past the Windows splash/loading screen, either via the Startup Repair or the menu regarding whether I want to go into Safe Mode etc. Which I get depends on from what scenario it was last shutdown it seems. In all of the above scenarios, there is another strange visual behaviour on the screen, which is that the bottom 10-15% of the screen is a replication of the top 10-15%, which is very strange (i.e. when I'm in the Startup Repair - which displays without any other visual artefacts btw - if I move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen, it also shows at the bottom, hopefully that makes sense).

So anyway, regardless of whether I go in via any of the Safe Mode options, Startup Repair, or anything else it presents me with, I can never get it to boot any further than the windows loading screen, does anyone have any ideas? I did give in to temptation earlier and opened it up, re-seated the RAM and HDD and made sure everything seemed ok - no loose screws rattling around or anything on fire, lol.

I have been running the Windows 7 RC on this machine for a few months, so while it might be relevant to the troubleshooting of the problem, I don't believe it's the cause, as it's been fine up until now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I really don't want to lose my lappy, or have to pay a bundle for someone else to fix it up for me!

Thanks in advance, any questions, please fire away!

[SaltLife]

The hopeful solution would be that it's the monitor that has gone bad, or a bad firmware on the system or even better that Windows is to blame. Unfortunately neither of those options appear to fit the bill.

First things first, to eliminate the monitor, does the laptop have video out options? I don't think this would matter personally, but it's good to try. (Besides a bad display wouldn't BSOD)

Have you gone into the system bios to see if there are any self-diagnostics for the laptop?

Have you tried disabling advanced features (if possible)

I'm going to lookup if any firmware updates have been released that relate to your problems. But it sounds a little more serious. Given what you have said.

Also, can you pull the Windows crash report off of the HDD from another machine?

[3N1GM4]

I just checked the log on the Startup Repair again and the only item which says anything other than "Completed Successfully" is:

Repair Action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error Code = 0x490
Time taken = 589809ms

The hopeful solution would be that it's the monitor that has gone bad, or a bad firmware on the system or even better that Windows is to blame. Unfortunately neither of those options appear to fit the bill.

First things first, to eliminate the monitor, does the laptop have video out options? I don't think this would matter personally, but it's good to try. (Besides a bad display wouldn't BSOD)

I will try it with an external monitor, but as you say, I doubt it's the display itself, due to what it's doing and the BSOD etc.

Have you gone into the system bios to see if there are any self-diagnostics for the laptop?

Have you tried disabling advanced features (if possible)

Have been in yes, but there doesn't appear to be a whole lot there unfortunately. Turned off what I could that seemed unnecessary, but with no effect so far.

I'm going to lookup if any firmware updates have been released that relate to your problems. But it sounds a little more serious. Given what you have said.

Also, can you pull the Windows crash report off of the HDD from another machine?

I dunno about getting the HDD into another machine, I would presume I'd need some kind of adapter to connect it, it doesn't look like any kind of standard IDE/SATA connection that I've ever seen, but I have been out of the tech loop for a while now!

[SaltLife]

Repair Action: System files integrity check and repair<br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Result: Failed. Error Code = 0x490<br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Time taken = 589809ms

That error should be alleviated by running chkdsk on the primary drive. I don't think Windows is to blame because you have problems with the display from the time the acer logo is presented. This would be an internal hardware error, either display, chipset, or because of a firmware issue. I could be wrong, but that was typically the case when I worked on a laptop.

As for the laptop HDD, you are right you would require an adaptor or an secondary laptop available with similar specs. Another option would have been to boot a live cd, but in your case I don't think that would work as you still would have the display issues. -- Not that it would hurt to try ;)

There is a BIOS update available, or it could be the original. The Acer site is vague on what was fixed/patched in the release. It's version 1.24. The second problem with the update is it's designed to be ran from within Windows - something you are unable to achieve right now.

[TEX4S]

....

I dunno about getting the HDD into another machine, I would presume I'd need some kind of adapter to connect it, it doesn't look like any kind of standard IDE/SATA connection that I've ever seen, but I have been out of the tech loop for a while now!

It is probably a SATA HDD with an adaptor on the end to connect to the HDD interface.

It sounds like your vid card/ integrated vid just bit the dust.

If it were me, I would consider it a blessing since it is the perfect time to buy something decent this time. (not another Acer), & if it takes more than an hour to troubleshoot - it isnt worth it. Laptops are expensive to work on and an Acer isnt worth it.

There seems to be many people with this same problem -

http://forums.techarena.in/portable-devices/1305358.htm

[3N1GM4]

It is probably a SATA HDD with an adaptor on the end to connect to the HDD interface.

It sounds like your vid card/ integrated vid just bit the dust.

If it were me, I would consider it a blessing since it is the perfect time to buy something decent this time. (not another Acer), & if it takes more than an hour to troubleshoot - it isnt worth it. Laptops are expensive to work on and an Acer isnt worth it.

There seems to be many people with this same problem -

http://forums.techarena.in/portable-devices/1305358.htm

I think I agree with you based on what I've seen so far. Maybe time to start looking around, although there's no way I can buy a new one for a couple of months, as I've just shelled out ?1,000 to keep my car on the road, despite it being worth less than ?2k!!!

Plus, lol at the variety of advice in that thread you linked to.

I think I'll still try to get the HDD connected to another machine/laptop to see if there's anything on there I need, but then it looks like I'll just need to get rid of it. :(

[Invizibleyez]

Ok, a couple of thoughts.

1.) get it fixed. I know you are broke. If you have any money available to you, you can shop for another motherboard on ebay. This will require you to disassemble the laptop, which can be a big pain. If you plan on going this route, use a digital camera, and take lots of pictures so you can refer to the pictures if you forgot how things go.

2.) Sell it (ebay is great for this as well). I know, who wants a broken laptop? Tons of people! How many people do you think would want the screen because they broke theirs? And screens go for a decent amount of money. How about the memory, keyboard, case, optical drive, etc. You can sell the whole thing "as-is" or "broken" if you want, or you can part it out and sell the parts individually. By going this route you may get enough money to get a new laptop, or at least close to it.

I hope this gives you some ideas on what to do. Don't recycle it or throw it out. There is still plenty of value left in the "broken" machine of yours. And don't worry about not recycling it. Even the enviornment obsessed agree that re-using or selling old tech is as good if not better than recycling it.

[TEX4S]

Sorry, I didnt read the posts before I threw up that link, I just saw the OP was having the same issue.

Man, it sure shows the quality of neowin's support as opposed to other sites.

I wonder if those boneheads ever worked on a computer their entire life ?

Actually they sound like people who take an A+ Cert test, know all of the definition, but are 100% clueless when it comes to application.

Im sorry, I wont post any more links

[3N1GM4]

Sorry, I didnt read the posts before I threw up that link, I just saw the OP was having the same issue.

Man, it sure shows the quality of neowin's support as opposed to other sites.

I wonder if those boneheads ever worked on a computer their entire life ?

Actually they sound like people who take an A+ Cert test, know all of the definition, but are 100% clueless when it comes to application.

Im sorry, I wont post any more links

Haha, it's all good, didn't mean it to sound like I was ungrateful of you posting the link, just that it made me LOL when I read the advice. :p