I have a weird problem with my laptop, an Acer Aspire 5542G.
It's been a week now, since my laptop started having boot problems. By pressing POWER ON, the laptop did not boot. That means: no BIOS, no POST, no HDD led, no keyboard locks, no display (even on external monitor, VGA and HDMI). But, there was action inside, like CPU (fan), HDD, DVD starting. It even heated up normally.
But after some trials, it worked perfectly, like there was no problem. And it had stayed on for at least five hours, without any freeze/bsod/etc, until I shut it off.
The next day the same boot problem appeared. I believed that the problem was the RAM (3GB, 2 modules 1GB, 2GB). I tried playing with those two modules (replacing, using just one in both slots, etc). The result was that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. There was no pattern, so as to prove me that either RAMs or slots were the issue. But it is the only place which affects the boot result, after a little change. Battery or adapter changes did not have any impact.
The problem became more complicated and, well, bizarre, after realizing that sometimes, with a little push on the plastic region above the RAMs (left of touchpad) or shake before pressing power button, the laptop would boot normally (which probably meant that the there was a problem with handles of the RAM slots). But, once started, it works like a charm. No freezing, no sudden shuttoffs. Windows works normally. Even after mildly shaking the whole thing! And frustration rises to the roof, when by turning it off and back on again or by rebooting, guess what: No boot!
To sum up, it feels like it there is a problem, that prevents the laptop from booting, located around the RAM region. But if the problem is overcome, there is nothing preventing the laptop from working flawlessly for hours.
I didn't try using someone else's laptop parts for testing, because of the fear of them getting damaged too.
I am running out of ideas. Your help would be much appreciated!
Thank you for bearing with me in this long post and for any ideas you can think of!
It's been a week now, since my laptop started having boot problems. By pressing POWER ON, the laptop did not boot. That means: no BIOS, no POST, no HDD led, no keyboard locks, no display (even on external monitor, VGA and HDMI). But, there was action inside, like CPU (fan), HDD, DVD starting. It even heated up normally.
But after some trials, it worked perfectly, like there was no problem. And it had stayed on for at least five hours, without any freeze/bsod/etc, until I shut it off.
The next day the same boot problem appeared. I believed that the problem was the RAM (3GB, 2 modules 1GB, 2GB). I tried playing with those two modules (replacing, using just one in both slots, etc). The result was that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. There was no pattern, so as to prove me that either RAMs or slots were the issue. But it is the only place which affects the boot result, after a little change. Battery or adapter changes did not have any impact.
The problem became more complicated and, well, bizarre, after realizing that sometimes, with a little push on the plastic region above the RAMs (left of touchpad) or shake before pressing power button, the laptop would boot normally (which probably meant that the there was a problem with handles of the RAM slots). But, once started, it works like a charm. No freezing, no sudden shuttoffs. Windows works normally. Even after mildly shaking the whole thing! And frustration rises to the roof, when by turning it off and back on again or by rebooting, guess what: No boot!
To sum up, it feels like it there is a problem, that prevents the laptop from booting, located around the RAM region. But if the problem is overcome, there is nothing preventing the laptop from working flawlessly for hours.
I didn't try using someone else's laptop parts for testing, because of the fear of them getting damaged too.
I am running out of ideas. Your help would be much appreciated!
Thank you for bearing with me in this long post and for any ideas you can think of!