Acer 3820tg not starting

[chubdeuce]

Hi all,

Bought my Acer 3820tg just over a year ago (i5 with HD 6550) and had some problem pop up recently. A couple of months ago I started to experience extremely long boot times and the temps rising to 78ish under load. Also had a few random restarts out of nowhere (typing word documents, browsing the internet etc). I figured after doing some more research that it was either the HDD or the RAM. Since Acers apparently can't handle doing MemTest (it kept restarting as soon as the test started, which other users reported) I figure I'd just replace the hard drive to see how it worked out and while I was at it reapplied new thermal paste.

Worked out okay and looked to be doing fine for a month or so with boot times back down to normal and otherwise seemed okay. Recently I've had a few random out of nowhere restarts again, and the last one that just happened seems to have killed the computer. It randomly shut itself off in the middle of browsing (not a restart, complete shut down) so I turned it back on and shut it off normally from Windows since I was pretty much done anyways.

Now it won't start back up. The blue light comes on when I hit the power, but the machine doesn't boot.

Any suggestions before I start taking stuff apart and guessing?

[Bronsky]

Memtest ran fine on my Acer.

So when you hit the power, you don't hear it booting? Conventional drive? It's not just the monitor? That is easy to test if you have an external monitor, plug it in through the HDMI and see if it powers the external display.

[chubdeuce]

Memtest ran fine on my Acer.

So when you hit the power, you don't hear it booting? Conventional drive? It's not just the monitor? That is easy to test if you have an external monitor, plug it in through the HDMI and see if it powers the external display.

Ya for whatever reason, on my machine memtest will start up and within 1 second will restart the computer until i stop it booting to the usb/extrenal where I put memtest. Was pretty frustrating

It's a Seagate momentus so a hybrid but mostly conventional. I'll check with an external monitor when I get back. I'll also confirm if I hear booting as well when I hit power but last I recall there was no sound.

[chubdeuce]

So when you power it on the light comes on as above but the laptop doesn't seem to do anything else. I plugged it into an external monitor and it still showed a complete blank. Doesn't seem to be POSTing or doing anything other than having power fed to it. After 10ish seconds the fan starts to spin, probably to start cooling components, but other than that nothing happens.

The same thing happens if I swap to a known working hard drive, or even no hard drive at all.

[Bronsky]

Well, the two obvious places to look are the memory modules or the CPU circuit, which would include the controller chip. If your memory won't test, there is a possibility that you have a faulty memory module. Try running with 1 at a time and see if that helps. But, given your symptoms, it is starting to sound like CPU failure or failed controler on the motherboard. Either way, it's not good. CPU's rarely fail and often, when they do, they give a warning.

[chubdeuce]

Well, the two obvious places to look are the memory modules or the CPU circuit, which would include the controller chip. If your memory won't test, there is a possibility that you have a faulty memory module. Try running with 1 at a time and see if that helps. But, given your symptoms, it is starting to sound like CPU failure or failed controler on the motherboard. Either way, it's not good. CPU's rarely fail and often, when they do, they give a warning.

It was indeed the memory. One of the sticks wouldn't boot, but the other stick (put into either socket) boot the computer just fine. Serves me right for not looking into it deeper when memtest starts exploding.

Anyways looks like its all clear and that I'll just need to buy a matched pair for the working RAM. Either that or just upgrade to better RAM! Have a good recommendation (mainly for stability) while I have you here?

[Bronsky]

GSkill. Newegg has a nice selection at a decent price. If you use SetFSB to overclock your CPU, stick with 4GB total. Otherwise I would get 8GB in 2 x 4GB Dimms.

Glad you found your problem.