Acer Travelmate 290 wont start

[superblacksmith]

Hi, i need your help.. i am having an Acer notebook (travelmate 290). I was using it for about 3 years. On that day i set it to hibernation mode then i left it for a few hours. Then when i tried to turn it on. It seems to be blank and nothing happened.. Then i force it to shut down and i restarted. when starting, it showed the "ACER" logo and in a few seconds, the whole screen blank and disappeard.. then it restart automatically by its self, then blank again... (continuously). i tried to enter the bios setup( same thing happened).

Is this because of the mother board or RAM or Hard disk?

[superblacksmith]

Please help me.. i dont know why it keep on restarting.. once i could get in further until the login page.. then automatically restart.. is it something wrong with the mother board or a virus?

[Sylvander]

I know next to nothing about laptops/notebooks, but...

Sounds like the CMOS battery is failing and the BIOS configuration settings [as seen in the BIOS Setup that you cannot get into] are changing chaotically and those incorrect settings are causing the Startup to fail and auto-restart.

Sometimes the POST completes and it restarts at login...
Sometimes it restarts during POST.

Replace the CMOS battery with a good one.
That should ALSO reset the BIOS configuration settings to the [good] default settings.

[jlreich]

Replacing the CMOS battery is a good start. Hopefully it is user accessible.

Make sure the fan area is free of dust. Blow it out with a can of compressed air if needed. This could be caused by over heating, but I doubt it.

If you have or can beg or barrow a stick of known good compatible ram try swapping it out to see if it helps any.

Or if you have more than one stick of ram try it with only one stick, then if that doesn't help try the other one by itself.

If that doesn't help remove the optical drive (if removable), hard drive and any other peripherals that you might have hooked up to the machine and see if it can boot.

Have a good look at any USB or firewire ports to make sure the pins have not gotten bent or anything. I have seen where they have been bent and one pin was touching metal and shorting out the system and causing it to shut off after abut 2 seconds. Bent the pin back so it wasn't touching anything and all was well. Yes the USB port was now useless because the pins are messed up but the system was fine.

[superblacksmith]

oh. thanks alot.. but what is CMOS battery? is it the laptop batterry..? and i tried to take out the RAM, HDD, and a few things.. and it seems it was not caused by those HDD, RAM etc..

[Sylvander]

"what is CMOS battery?"
It's the small [coin sized] chrome/shiny battery on the motherboard.
It helps keep the BIOS's user configuration settings stored in the CMOS.
1. When the battery begins to go faulty the user configuration settings begin to change chaotically and that can produce some strange and nasty effects.
2. I believe that if that battery is removed then the defaults are the settings used and no changes to those can be made/stored.
This is preferable to 1 above, since the PC should work reasonably normally, but without personalised tweaks.
3. With a new/good battery in place user configuration changes can be made and retained once again.
This is preferable to 2 [and therefore 1 also] above.

[recklessro]

Hi,

I'm experiencing very similar problems with my Travelmate 290 LCi.

I've disassembled the case and got the motherboard out, identifying the CMOS battery. The battery is connected to the board (appears to be soldered either side of the battery). Might be a silly question, but am I going to have to solder the replacement on as well?

Thanks in advance.

[Riick]

recklessro-

Some CMOS batteries can be easily removed from a battery holder, whereas others have contacts that are welded directly to the battery and then soldered to the board. Unfortunately, it sounds like you have the latter. This kind is usually rechargeable (I think some of the removable ones are not rechargeable) and so I think it's supposed to last as long as the rest of the board does. If you do plan on replacing it, you will indeed have to solder the replacement to the board. A trickier issue may be purchasing the battery to begin with. Sometimes the contacts are custom-welded to the battery for a particular motherboard manufacturer, in which case you may only be able to purchase the battery from the motherboard manufacturer. However, some electronics stores carry cmos computer button batteries with contacts already soldered, so it's worth checking. But I should ask: has your computer's clock been resetting itself lately? If not, then your problem may not be related to your cmos battery.