Question Laptop refusing to post. Blinking black screen

[ppterson]

Hi, yesterday I went to turn on my laptop, just to find it wouldn't post. The screen just kept flashing on and off. It had been doing this for some time now, but it would always post after a few seconds. I tried removing the battery, pressing the ON button for some 30 seconds, and trying to turn it on again, but nothing worked. Finally decided to take the laptop apart to try and troubleshoot the issue. I removed the hard drive and nothing. Removed the RAM DIMMs and tried to boot without them, with only one, once in each socket, and nothing. Tried everything that I could think of, with the original laptop screen and an external monitor, but to no avail. The external monitor didn't blink at all, only the laptop one.

But, I discovered something very interesting: when it was turned on with only one DIMM, the screen blinked at half the rate as it did with two DIMMs.
Now I have three theories: it's either a faulty BIOS chip, a faulty CPU(because it has no dedicated GPU, so the CPU has to do the image processing), or just a faulty motherboard.

I'm in college so I'm not that willing on dropping more than 140$ on a new motherboard that might not even be the issue. There is a guy on youtube that has done a BIOS flash on a similar laptop to mine. ¿Is it worth getting a relatively cheap BIOS reprogramming kit and doing it myself?¿Or should I just get a professional to fix it?

The laptop is an ACER E5-571, and the motherboard is an LA-B161P with an I7.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

 

[rainbowdash463]

Try cleaning the screen connector pin. It worked for me. Did the laptop boot into the OS when you were using an external display? If it does, there is no problem with your motherboard or your CPU.

 

[BEAUFORD_SAVAGE]

Hi, yesterday I went to turn on my laptop, just to find it wouldn't post. The screen just kept flashing on and off. It had been doing this for some time now, but it would always post after a few seconds. I tried removing the battery, pressing the ON button for some 30 seconds, and trying to turn it on again, but nothing worked. Finally decided to take the laptop apart to try and troubleshoot the issue. I removed the hard drive and nothing. Removed the RAM DIMMs and tried to boot without them, with only one, once in each socket, and nothing. Tried everything that I could think of, with the original laptop screen and an external monitor, but to no avail. The external monitor didn't blink at all, only the laptop one.

But, I discovered something very interesting: when it was turned on with only one DIMM, the screen blinked at half the rate as it did with two DIMMs.
Now I have three theories: it's either a faulty BIOS chip, a faulty CPU(because it has no dedicated GPU, so the CPU has to do the image processing), or just a faulty motherboard.

I'm in college so I'm not that willing on dropping more than 140$ on a new motherboard that might not even be the issue. There is a guy on youtube that has done a BIOS flash on a similar laptop to mine. ¿Is it worth getting a relatively cheap BIOS reprogramming kit and doing it myself?¿Or should I just get a professional to fix it?

The laptop is an ACER E5-571, and the motherboard is an LA-B161P with an I7.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

It's not going to be the BIOS chip. Never seen one go bad in 20 years + of repairing computers.
You have what is most likely a power supply issue. If you can get a meter, check the voltage on the power supply while plugged in at the wall, but not plugged in at the computer.
If it is a little over the rated voltage listed on the PS block, It will be the power supply on the motherboard. And unless you are comfortable soldering on a motherboard,
It's not going to be repairable for you, a shop will charge you more than it's worth. Keep the hard drive for the data on it. You can plug that using a external hard drive adapter to your new computer, and take your data off of it.

If you have experience with hardware, write back.