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Suspected Acer "Black screen of death"


StarStrider

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Hey guys, this may be an odd situation.

I'm attempting to help my boyfriend fix his computer because I'm the more tech savy of us. However, currently his laptop is an hour and a half away. He's coming to see me this next Thursday for the weekend though, and will likely leave it with me while he's on break for about a month, so I'd like to have a plan of action to start on as soon as I get my hands on it, hence why I'm starting this help request before I physically have it (though I can get him to send me info easily as needed). I really hope you guys are willing to work with me on this even though it's an odd middleman situation for right now. (And maybe it'll take the week to hear from any of you and this will become a moot point. Regardless.)

All right. He's got an Acer Aspire 7552G-6061 running on Win7 64-bit.

He began having trouble with it freezing on boot, then completely dying on him every time he used memory-intensive programs (playing games, using Skype chats, etc). I performed a clean install on it to rule out as much as possible, but the problems began again immediately. It would take several failed boots for it to finally boot up, but would die as soon as certain programs were used or if it was put into sleep, standby, or hibernation.

It currently does not even boot or load the BIOS, and fits the description of the Aspire One "Black screen of death" problem: once the power button is pushed, the screen is blank, black, and nothing happens.

I was going to have him try the updated solution I found for that problem: http://eric.chromick.../#axzz2EVvG4Z9o (It's the solution listed at the bottom of the post beyond the struck-out solution bits.)

But. For one, the BIOS download for his model of Aspire does not fit the solution's description of BIOS files. For two, I'm fairly certain this solution was developed under WinXP, and his laptop is Win7, so I don't want to try the provided modified BIOS files (especially since it's not the same model of computer anyway).

So, I'm not sure what to do. I've tried searching myself for newer, more relevant solution, but haven't found anything. I just really think this might be what's going on though, but maybe you have other ideas?

Thanks in advance, guys, you've been wizards for me in the past!

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No I hadn't gotten around to it yet. I used to have MemTest86, but if it can't boot is there a ram testing tool in Ubuntu or PE Builder?

I know some versions of Windows 7 have a memory test built in, but I'm not sure if it's all versions or not. If it's there, use it, and memtest86. And if there's more than one dimm I'd suggest alternating them to see if it works with one but not the other. Memory test programs from my experiences haven't been all that accurate.

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"I've heard him mention the fan running a lot, but I haven't heard it myself. I do not believe it has overheated ever."

believing and knowing are two different things . ;)

during boot-up many machines will run the cpu cooling fan at high speed .

once things "settle down" the fan is throttled back .

given the problems with the boot-up , this may be what your bf is hearing .

still , it is best to make sure that the air path , cooling fins , fan blades and such are clear .

dust and god-knows-what can clog the cooling fins on the heat-pipe ... this is not readily observable from the outside world .

it is easy enough to check/correct and is one less thing to send you down a merry path .

also ... heat-pipes do fail . i found a bad one in a friend's laptop about a week ago .

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Just started memtest about 45 minutes ago. I almost couldn't get it running though. I made both a bootable usb (first) and when I couldn't get that to launch--the screen stayed blank; the bios never loads--I tried the CD version just in case, and had the same trouble with it.

I finally popped in a LiveCD of Ubuntu, which has memtest on its advanced startup options, and that finally took.

So, I still feel like it might be the bios since I couldn't get memtest to run without the ubunutu disk.

Also, the fan has been running fine and the laptop hasn't gotten unreasonably hot so far. I'll post again when the memtest is finished with results.

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Sorry for replying again, I'm not trying to bump it, there's just been an update in the problem.

I figured out how to create a bootable USB into DOS with the latest BIOS version supplied by Acer for the laptop. So, I attempted to flash the BIOS, but before it actually updated an error came up: Phoenix phlash16 could not open file C:\BIODS.WPH. Yet when I exited DOS and rebooted the computer (I've been able to run Ubuntu off a liveCD), the BIOS loaded. I'm not sure why/how since the flash didn't actually occur...

But the laptop still won't boot. After the initial bios screen, there's a horizonal blinking cursor for a few seconds before the screen goes blank like before.

I made a Win7 64bit repair disc from my desktop (which also runs Win7 64bit) to try and access the recovery module, but after booting from the disc and letting the files load, nothing would happen and the screen went blank. I retried several times to the same problem. I did try the disc in my desktop to make sure that the disc itself works and it does.

...So, now I'm really stumped what to try next.

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hmmm ...

of late i have had two laptops that exhibit some symptoms similar to your problems .

i pulled the drives and "looked" at each one with the "disk utility" in linux mint (easy enough to do , just hook the questionable drive up to a spare sata/pata port) ...

in one case i could see the hidden recovery partition and the "main" partition but the "windows is here" partition was unreadable .

the smart data/test showed bad sectors that were unwritable/waiting to remap ... while i was testing , three more sectors went south !

i made a copy of the drive ASAP .

the second drive would spin up but "disk utility" said that the drive was "unformatted" ... bull , the laptop had been working ok . no smart data could be read either .

in this case , the drive went into the "full stupid" mode (as one of my friends would say) .

in both cases , a new drive and installation of an OS was the fix .

a suggestion ...

to better ascertain what is going on , until someone with more knowledge than myself shows up , you might try slipping an known good "donor" drive into the laptop and see if you can load a version of 'nix on it (via a dvd image burn) and get it to run ...

this will "prove" the MB , ram (etc .) one way or the other .

i would suggest "linux mint 13 maya LTS" with the mate desktop ... download the correct version (32 or 64 bit) from their website .

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hmmm ...

of late i have had two laptops that exhibit some symptoms similar to your problems .

i pulled the drives and "looked" at each one with the "disk utility" in linux mint (easy enough to do , just hook the questionable drive up to a spare sata/pata port) ...

in one case i could see the hidden recovery partition and the "main" partition but the "windows is here" partition was unreadable .

the smart data/test showed bad sectors that were unwritable/waiting to remap ... while i was testing , three more sectors went south !

i made a copy of the drive ASAP .

the second drive would spin up but "disk utility" said that the drive was "unformatted" ... bull , the laptop had been working ok . no smart data could be read either .

in this case , the drive went into the "full stupid" mode (as one of my friends would say) .

in both cases , a new drive and installation of an OS was the fix .

a suggestion ...

to better ascertain what is going on , until someone with more knowledge than myself shows up , you might try slipping an known good "donor" drive into the laptop and see if you can load a version of 'nix on it (via a dvd image burn) and get it to run ...

this will "prove" the MB , ram (etc .) one way or the other .

i would suggest "linux mint 13 maya LTS" with the mate desktop ... download the correct version (32 or 64 bit) from their website .

I would also suggest pulling the drive and saving any data you may want to keep, provided the drive is still good. Like CWB suggested, if you have another drive you can test with that would be a good way to rule out the hard drive as the cause of the problem. I have seen bad hard drives do crazy things to computers.

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I started a disk check through Ubuntu livecd (it's still not done). I don't have a spare drive to test it with. I have my own laptop's drive, but I can't just swap them since mine runs 32-bit and his 64-bit let alone the drivers and everything else. However, I really don't remember a drive checker taking all day to run. (It's just shy of 12 hours.)

Actually, I do have a spare PATA laptop drive. Is there any way to rig it up to a SATA connection to try, or would it even be compatible enough to try?

My other problem eventually will be that I don't have a Win7 disc. My desktop and his laptop both run OEM Home Premium editions. I of course made a set of recovery discs for my desktop, but they're specific for my desktop. So I guess I'll have to find out where to d/l a vanilla or vanilla SP1 version of Win7 to make a disc.

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weeeeelll ...

before shelling out the coin of the realm ...

is it possible to beg or borrow (i do not condone theft) a "donor" hdd from someone/somewhere ?

most shops or geeks/bit-heads have a bone-pile .

the disk check will take a long time to run as you are in the "live" mode .

however , if the drive is going south , the more you run it the worse it can get .

stop the disk check ... take a look at the hdd with "disk utility" ... this will read the S.M.A.R.T. data that the drive runs in and of itself ...

a look at the data will indicate what may be happening .

if there are any red "danger will robinson" indicators in the list , depending on exactly what they are , they will help determine the next steps to take .

remember , a failing drive is like running a car with a rod knocking ... it aint gonna get no better as you drive it .

sometimes (as i indicated in my post) there will be no data or the drive will not be readable .

at other times there will be "chunks/partitions missing or unreadable" ... this coupled with the above would give me cause to get a new drive and install the OS .

and this will take you to the point of going around with the manufacturer about obtaining a copy of the OS and drivers on disk (or a download) that works with your machine , or ...

buying a new copy elsewhere , go to the manufacturers site and download all the pertinent drivers for your machine , load it all up and call it a day .

ps ... you might want to consider using a 'nix flavor to recover any needed files/data from the old drive (if possible) .

for example , one of the drives i mentioned was not readable with/by my windows machine ... it said there was nothing on it and needed to be formatted .

yes , you could go the route and get a pata to sata or usb adapter , but by the time it is all said and done it may be cheaper (time wise included) to obtain a new sata hdd for the machine .

do not pull the drive from your machine and drop it in the "sick patient" ! you may just wind up with two pooched machines .

do not be tempted to download a "vanilla flavor" of W7 unless it is from a reputable source . those warez and fileshare *sources* are not to be trusted ...

not that i am saying that you would do something like this .

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He was operating off of an external drive for all data, so I'm not too worried about backing anything up. If I did it would be just a few files here and there.

I actually do already have all his drivers downloaded from when I did the clean install this last summer. Just need to remake a Win7 disc, which I'm working on. I *think* I found a good Win7 SP1 64bit HP iso.

All right, I stopped the test and ran DiskUtility and it reports the following:

Overall assessment is that the "Disk has a few bad sectors" but it's still green lighted. (513 bad sectors reported, temp okay.) Read error rate is good, as is spinup time, spinup retry count, and write error rate,

BUT. Reallocated sector count is in red warning, with normalized 153, worst 153, threshold 140, and a value of 513 sectors.

So...whatcha think?

Edited to add: Just finished making a new Win7 install disk, and popped it in just to see the repair install options, and windows couldn't detect itself on the drive, nor could it read or detect any space on the main data partition. (It recognized a boot partition and a recovery partition, neither of which had windows on according to the disc, and it displayed a blank drive icon for the data partition). So, yeah, sounds like a bad drive to me, but I'd just like someone else's confirmation before I call this a closed case and continue.

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yeppers ... it would seem that the drive is going that-a-way .

pull what you need off of it before it craters .

just out of curiosity , what is the make of the failing drive ?

if you don't need a 500gig drive , get one with less capacity ... a 250gig would be plenty for most individuals .

in this case as an external drive is being used for bulk storage something smaller than 250gig would be ok .

i would recommend a western digital drive if you can find one .

i have seen 160gig (or there about) WD drives at newegg for about 65 bucks (i did not check the prices this morning) .

i have a theory (and it is just a theory) based on the somewhat limited number of observations i have made ...

with those small hdds , the larger the capacity + faster spin rate , the more sensitive they are to mechanical shock while running .

edit ... i just checked at newegg , not a bad price :

250 gig :

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136279

160 gig :

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136278

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Thanks. Your theory makes sense; especially since companies have been pretty slow in putting out laptops with more than 500gb hard drives for a long time. It's really just been this year that they have (beyond lines like Alienware), even though we've had TB desktop drives for a while now.

The failing drive was Western Digital 500gb. Probably not one of their higher-end lines though. If you want the exact model number or something, I can repost or message you or something when I pull it. Otw I wasn't planning on touching it until I get the new drive.

I was just going to get him a WD Scorpio Blue 320gb. It's what I replaced my own laptop hdd when it failed over a year ago, and while I don't use my laptop every day I've been pleased with it. Plus they have it at Best Buy. He's been considering saving up for a nice desktop anyway, so I'm not too worried about the laptop needing to chug on for years and years. It's an acer anyway, so something else is bound to fail before the new hard drive...lol.

Thanks for all your help! =)

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as you are going to be cycling the laptop out of service ... save a few bucks and get the 250 gig unit .

i do not know where you are located so i cannot suggest anymore than what i have (in the links i posted) .

as an example , i replaced the drives with 160 and 250 gig WD units ... this is very adequate for the owners .

many people do not come close to filling their hard drives .

when you cycle the laptop out of service , you might think about loading a flavor of unix on it ... some call it "recycling" .

yesterday i "recycled" an acer travelmate 2434 with an older version of ubuntu (10.04 LTS) .

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