Solved! Acer C720 chromebook failure - help!

[hhpopp]

Hi all,

My Acer C720 Chromebook just died, and I'm hoping to enlist the community’s expertise to diagnose the problem.

I was using the laptop as normal just now, when suddenly horizontal black stripes began to appear across the bottom half of the display. After several seconds of flickering in this manner, the laptop switched itself off. I hit the power button, and the same thing happened once more. Now it won't power up at all.

Further information:
Nothing at all happens when I press the power button while on battery. When I attach the charger, however, the charging light comes on. By pressing power while on charger, a second LED comes online that normally indicates the laptop is running. The fan spins. However, the display remains black. I've hooked it up to an external monitor via HDMI, but this produces no picture.

That’s all it does. No login screen. Nothing.

What might this point to? SSD failure? Or the motherboard? (I hope not.)

 

[webworkings]

It is much harder to test on an external HDMI monitor as it may try using a different GPU than the integrated one. I would try using a standard monitor. Hooked up not by HDMI to test with. Then try the following..

1. Turn the laptop off (not sleep or hibernate but off).
2. Connect an external monitor to the laptop.
3. Turn on the external monitor.
4. Turn on the laptop.

NOTE: You may have to press an "external monitor" button. Could be the f4 button or a button with two monitors on it, for the external monitor to work.

If you can see fine on the external monitor, then your attached display, or the ribbon cable that connects it, are your problem.

If you can't see on the external monitor at all, or the problem occurs on the external monitor as well, then it is probably the graphics card/GPU that is the problem, which may require the motherboard be replaced.

 

[hhpopp]

It is much harder to test on an external HDMI monitor as it may try using a different GPU than the integrated one. I would try using a standard monitor. Hooked up not by HDMI to test with. Then try the following..

1. Turn the laptop off (not sleep or hibernate but off).
2. Connect an external monitor to the laptop.
3. Turn on the external monitor.
4. Turn on the laptop.

NOTE: You may have to press an "external monitor" button. Could be the f4 button or a button with two monitors on it, for the external monitor to work.

Hey, thanks for the input. Acer C720s only has an HDMI port, no VGA ports. I've frequently used HDMI to hook the laptop up to an external display, but pressing the usual button combination now does nothing. Black screen.