Acer Aspire 5520 problem

paddy1nz

Solid State Member
Messages
7
Hello all,

I've got a problem with my Acer Aspire 5520 laptop. I got it in January 2008 (yeah, it's not exactly new). It has never given me any issues until about a month ago. It has 2GB RAM, 250GB HD and 2.10Ghz AMD Dual Core, and runs Vista Home Premium.

THE PROBLEM:
I go to turn my laptop on, by pressing the 'power' button. The button lights up, the fan spins - THE SCREEN STAYS DARK. I leave it for 10 minutes, after which time, it is either still on, or has turned itself off. If it's still on, I'll hold the power button to turn it off. If it has turned itself off already, I'll attempt to restart it. Usually the same thing will happen - power light comes on, fan spins, but no screen. Eventually (usually after 5 or 6 attempts), when I push the power button, the screen will come on. Then the laptop will usually start up as normal and operate as normal. Sometimes when it finally decides to turn on, it runs StartUp Repair, and never finds anything wrong.

Indeed, I'm typing this to you on the laptop in question (took me about 45 minutes to turn the thing on!). Once it is on, it runs fine. It's just that it routinely takes me between 10 minutes to 1 hour to get my computer running!

I would appreciate any help or advice as to what might be the problem.

Many thanks,
Paddy.
 
If you know how to replace your RAM then u could check to see if one of the modules are loose.
 
I'll have a go at that - thanks.

Tried removing the RAM, got any dust off it (there wasn't any dust on it), put it back. Still doesn't fix the problem. Still took me a few attempts (and about 30 minutes) to get the computer back up and running again.

Paddy.
 
Have you tried hooking it to an external monitor? The self shutdown could be windows shutting down. Also you could have a fan issue, or a memory issue. It really sounds like an LCD issues. The startup repair is for the failed startups. Try hooking to an external monitor see if it boots fine, if it doesn't then take 1 stick out, and see if it boots, if you only have 1 stick, then go to newegg and get you one or see if someone can test it for you. Typically if the computer will eventually boot, without you resetting the memory, then the memory shouldn't be an issue.
 
Are you sure the LCD isn't coming on at all? What I mean is, if you can barely see a very dim image when you look at the screen from a certain angle, then you may just have a bad inverter board causing the backlight not to turn on. Those are usually cheap to replace. However, the backlight itself could also be bad. This usually isn't cheap to replace.
 
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