AM5100-U5300A Desktop Won't Start

I have a six year old Acer AM5100-U5300A desktop. It's worked for years but now won't start. When I hit the power button, the fan comes on, and I hear very brief hard drive activity, but nothing shows on my monitor.

Hitting F1, DEL or other keys on the keyboard doesn't seem to do anything.

Any advice on how to diagnose the problem?

I'm savvy enough to replace a fan, heat sink, processor, hard drive, and obvious stuff, but I don't know a lot more about the parts inside the machine.

The last time the computer did start up, I had to unplug an external HDD that was plugged into a USB port on machine. it went to the BIOS screen and showed an error:

BIOS Checksum Error - Defaults Loaded

Press Del to enter Setup or F1 to continue.

I pressed F1 to continue, and it booted and worked fine. When I attempted to restart the machine the next day, it shut down but wouldn't start up again.

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Chan

Try unplug the RAM card, clean the contacts and put it, it may help.

rcauvin

Thanks. I did try unplugging the RAM sticks, cleaning, and reinserting. It didn't work, at least initially.

Then I replaced the CMOS battery (CR2032), and I was at least able to get back to the BIOS screen, where again I'm getting the "CMOS checksum error" message.

Not sure what to do now.

rcauvin

I hit F1 to continue after getting the "CMOS checksum error" message in the BIOS screen. Windows asked me if I wanted to analyze and do repairs, which I chose to do. I declined, however, to go back to a system restore point. Windows finished its analysis after about 30 minutes and declared it couldn't help me. I then simply continued the boot, and it was successful. I rebooted the machine again, and it installed some Windows updates and booted up just fine. Things are now running smoothly.

The only wrinkle is that I haven't tried re-attaching my USB HDD that was causing the machine not to even power on at all. I'll probably try it in the next few days. (The HDD works just fine plugged into my laptop computer.)

XeoNoX

if your Acer am5100-u5300a stops turning on outta no where and you still hear the fans come on but no keyboard lights or video output it is probably the CMOS battery, there is a wierd problem with these boards that if the CMOS battery fails the computer will not turn on completely ...took me forever to figure out

drmdrm

Took me years to figure out but it's happended to dekstop and laptops. It's a dead CMOS battery. So if you re-place the CR2032 battery it will boot up. It's worked for 2 dekstops and one laptop so pretty confident that is the issue.

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