S7-392 fails on battery

abdekker12
abdekker12 Member Posts: 33

Tinkerer

My S7-392 has been working fine for over a year, but will now black screen after 3-5 minutes if booted up on battery power. There is *no* warning. The laptop just cuts power, the OS dies. If I reboot the laptop, it restarts ok, but every now and then I get a "Windows was not restarted correctly" message with recovery options. If I choose "Just restart" (I think the option is called), then it reboots ok.

 

Please help. The Power Options on the laptop have not been tinkered with.

Answers

  • Sharanji
    Sharanji ACE Posts: 4,327 Pathfinder

    I suggest you to perform a reset using the battery pinhole at the bottom of your computer to check the issue.
    You may completely power OFF the computer. Disconnect the AC adapter.
    Insert a paperclip into the hole and press for four seconds to reset the computer The battery reset pin hole would have battery symbol near the hole. After power reset reconnect the AC adapter, and resume normal use.

     

    You may also go to go to Control Panel>Hardware and Sound>Power Options
    Click on Change plan settings and click Restore default setting for this plan.

     

    Click the Kudos kudos-thumbs-up.pngto say “Thanks” for helping! select "Accept Solution" if your issue is resovled.

     

  • abdekker12
    abdekker12 Member Posts: 33

    Tinkerer

    Hi Sharanji,

     

    Thanks for the reply. I found the hole but before I stick a paperclip into it, what exactly does this do? Is it resetting the entire OS (delete files?), or just rset the battery? If the battery, what exactly does "resetting" the battery mean? What information will I glean from doing this that might prove useful for diagnosis / warranty / repair?

     

    Before I got this response, I already went into Power Options and restored settings to the original.

     

    I also updated from BIOS from v2.09 to v2.12 (which according to the Acer website is the very latest for my laptop).

     

    Neither of the above (restoring Power Options or updating BIOS) have resolved the issue. My laptop does not work at all or reliably on battery. I am currently typing this on my laptop, running on AC power.

  • abdekker12
    abdekker12 Member Posts: 33

    Tinkerer

    Quick update: I have not stuck a paperclip into the battery yet, but I have done the following:

    * In Power Options > Advanced Settings, I have set Hard disk > Turn off hard disk after to "15 minutes" for battery and "30 minutes" for AC power.

    * Same settings, I have set  Display > Enable adaptive brightness to "Off" for both.

    * Disabled the "Sensore Monitoring Service" in Services.

     

    After a reboot, I have been using the laptop for ~45 minutes now on battery wihout an issue. This is a single test, though, this seems to fail regularly so will keep this updated as I try new things.

     

    Hope to get a response from Sharanji about what sticking the paperclip in the battery is doing and what information I might gain from doing that.

  • abdekker12
    abdekker12 Member Posts: 33

    Tinkerer

    The "Sensor Monitoring Service" turned out to be a red herring. The laptop continued to faile after anything from 30s to 60min. Have now followed down the following and since then the battery and laptop have been behaving themselves:

    * Reset the battery as suggested by Acer support. Placed a paperclip into the small battery hole on the reverse of the laptop case. Acer recommened 8-10s, but after feeling the soft "click" of a button being pressed when I inserted the paperclip, I left it in place for about 30 seconds.

    * In Control Panel > Power Options, I created a new plan called "No Turn Off On Battery" in which I set all options for battery power to "Never" (screen, processor, sleep, etc).

    * Left laptop powered overnight on battery (to completely drain it). In the morning, recharged the laptop without powering it up.

     

    Since then, things have been operating fine on battery. But note, that I am continuing to run on the "No Turn Off On Battery" power plan (and intend to continue using this plan and manually monitoring battery levels myself). Because of this, I am not absolutely sure if it was the "reset>drain>recharge" or the "no turn off power plan" part which solved this.

     

    I am grateful to Acer Support for pointing out the battery reset option. But I'm now wondering if this is not more likely a bug in the power management itself (whether at Acer firmware or Microsoft software level is unclear). Running on the "No Turn Off On Battery" plan just seems sensible to me now. Why would I want the laptop or Operating System to shut down my laptop anyway just because I have not wiggled the mouse for a few minutes?

  • abdekker12
    abdekker12 Member Posts: 33

    Tinkerer

    More updates. The laptop has continued to fail suddenly on battery after all of the following:

     

    * Discharging static (by sticking a paperclip in the battery cover hole on the reverse of the laptop)

    * Set the Power Options to never turn off on battery

    * Re-calibrating the battery by draining to as close to zero as possible, then re-charging to 100%

     

    After each of the above I might get an encouraging hour or so before...bam! the laptop suddenly dies as if from a fatal stroke.

     

    I've now found that this problem is in fact very widespread with these Acer laptops. Acer's own suggested solution is to tighten the Torx T6 screws on the reverse of the laptop. After doing this, I have not had a re-occurence of the problem...but as with the other fixes, it is early days. I will continue to monitor and report back.

     

    The problem (and solution) is discussed in more detail here:

    http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/31782/~/acer-aspire-s7-391-shuts-down-randomly-while-on-battery-power

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fix-Acer-Aspire-S7-392-Ultrabook-Shutting-Down-Unexpectedly-434338.shtml

     

    The issue appears to relate to a "safety" check that shuts down the laptop (without warning!) if it thinks the case is open. Unfortunately if the screws are slightly loose or the "case open" sensor is faulty, this can trigger the power shutdown in error. Acer really need to either fix or remove this check. For example, if this check really is needed, increase the tolerance so that only a really loose screw triggers the fault. And why the catastrophic fatal stroke anyway? Why not a graceful Windows hibernation with a clear message in the fault log to indicate why the laptop is shutting down? My own view is that this check is unnecesary. If someone wants to open the case with power on, let them. I for one have been disappointed in my laptop and will probably not buy Acer again.

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    Several things:

     

    1) The interlock switch is near one of the center screws on the systems I've seen. Think its pirpose is to prevent damage if something conductive is dropped inside with power on. A piece of tape can be used as a shim if not reliably staying on.

     

    2) The reset pin simply clears the ram and resets the CPU back to boot. Non-volatile settings including BIOS, CMOS, and fixed disk are not affected.

     

    3) I'd use BatteryInfoView set to log every few seconds to monitor the power status and see if the battery is the cause. Nirsoft has some very usable tools.

  • abdekker12
    abdekker12 Member Posts: 33

    Tinkerer

    The solution appears to be the T6 Torx screws on the back. See this answer for further details and Acer's own support which discussed this recurring problem across multiple laptop models:

    http://community.acer.com/t5/S-and-R-Series-Laptops/S7-392-black-screens-if-on-battery-power/m-p/396820#U396820