Acer Aspire 5552G power light but only a black screen on startup

Hi all,

I have an insteresting issue, i have a acer aspire 5552g running win7 and the latest bios (upgraded it to try to fix this issue)

I see when looking at google that there are quite a few Acers that have a similar problem and i think i have tried most if not all of their fixes.

The issue is that you turn the laptop on, and the power lights come on, but nothing on the screen.. no post, nothing.. i can hear the hdd, dvd and fan start but the screen stays blank.

i saw of some forums that it could be a corrupt bios so i used Acers flash utility to upgrade the bios from 1.3 to the latest.

pressing PF2 or PF8 to jump to setup or safe mode does nothing, sometimes.. and i do mean sometimes, pressing FN and ESC will get it to boot to windows, but it is rare and this issue is very intermittant.

I have tried removing the battery and the bios battery, and discharging the power by holding power key for 30 seconds, and starting on mains, but no luck.

if and when i do get the machine to go into windows, it seems to behave itself most of the time.. although i have noticed that on a few occasions (even when im in the bios) the touch pad and keyboard stop responding? very weird.. if it only happened in windows i would suspect driver problems, but in the bios as well????

does anyone have any suggestions for a fix please? i am pretty tech savvy and can strip the laptop down if needed.

Thanks

Enopho

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newacer

have you tried external monitor? its LCD defective if external works.

no acer logo comes at all----probably mainboard

no display/blank screen after acer logo----hard drive

Enopho

Hi, sorry should of said,

yes tried external screen.. still nothing.

there is no logo at all, as the screen is black. It looks like it has no power, but every now and again it fires up ok. I have already checked the video cables are connected to the mainboard, and i have dropped the hard drive into an external dock to ensure the data is there, i have tried swapping memory, and removing memory to test it, i even put the memory into another laptop and it works. but seriously if you type acer aspire black screen on bootup, there are loads and loads of results, i think i have tried them all now Smiley Sad - the biggest clue for me is that when the screen does come back and i go into bios, the keyboard and touchpad might not work in there - the next reboot after that - black screen! I cant seem to find out what might cause a keyboard and touchpad not to work in the bios? I have already flashed the Bios sucessfully to the latest version, i thought that would of nailed it.. and it did boot up after .. at least 20 times (off and on) and then the kbd and mouse stopped on a restart and then next reboot.. black screen

Kagene

I know what the problem is....

Your video card which i hate to inform you is integrated into your system has gone bad or in short its fried... Since the video card itself isnt a seperate entity your laptop is now scrap! Tada ive been told there is a recall for this but cant find it nor can i get a hold of someone to talk to them about it since my warranty is expired so if you get anything let me know

Enopho

thanks for your suggestion, but the graphics card works intermittantly as in.. it does sometimes start and load windows, and i cant see how that would impact on the keyboard and trackpad not working in BIOS as they are seperate entities?

If anyone has any other ideas, please im open to suggestions!

Eno

acerfan

there is really nothing you can do at this point except to send it to acer repair depot.

DannyD

This just happened to mine too. Did you ever find a solution?

cdvideo

If you can find where and how to send it in for repair ?? I have sent a better part of today asking that question and all I get is look in the support forum for info on how to get your Laptop going Even thoug I asked a direct question on where I can send it in for repair all I get is Mississauga On or Richmond BC

zar1001

It happened to mine yesterday, Acer what is the solution? I have been through the same steps described above.

ahmedis

Same thing started happening to me as well. At first pressing F2 repeatedly when powering on seemed to help but only briefly.. then I tried pressing Fn+F6 while powering on and that seemed to work as well but that also seemed to be a fluke... now nothing seems to work. Acer should have really have a fix for this, seems lots of others are having this problem.

cdvideo

Took mine in for service.They replace th emain Board.

Dan C

ahmedis

I took mine to a local laptop place and they're saying it's a bad GPU and will be $169 (CDN) to fix. I find it odd though since it booted intermittently and worked fine.

ahmedis

This thread http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6122_102-565201/acer-laptop-black-screen-even-after-bios-flash/ sounds like it describes the same or similar problem. The OP eventually found the root cause to be bad capacitors from the sounds of it.

cdvideo

On mine the power light would not even come on after I did the Bios Flash Total death Nota Thing would work.Thet said it was related to the Nvideo card that went down and when I switched to it all Hell broke Loose Smiley Wink

liljom

I just registered to comment here...

The same happened to my 5551G. It sounds like it starts when I press Power, but then it stops. No BIOS, no boot, just black screen (and not the powered black). It doesn't do anything via HDMI or VGA output. After mate flashed BIOS it worked for a few on/off cycle, and now dead again

A local laptop service diagnosed it, and they said it's the GPU. Did you use HDMI a lot? I did. Can that be the cause?

And when did it happen to you? It happened to me after 2 years. Maybe killswitch?

I hope somebody finds something out. If I do, I'll be back for sure Smiley Happy

csokosz

the north bridge BGA chipset replacing will solve the problem. i had a same type of error. i replaced the bios chip at home, but it doesent work. i had to go to the nearest laptop service and they replaced the motherboard chipset and my laptop come back to life Smiley Happy good luck!

royrempel

I had this issue with an Aspire 5750 laptop. I got it in for maintenance. Disassembled the whole thing, cleaned it from dust, wiped the old heat paste from the processor, put new one on it and assembled everything carefully. When I booted it up after all I got nothing but the spinning from the fan and power light on. After one day and a half of disassembling and assembling back and forth and searching like crazy for the possible reason I remembered the problem I had recently with a Lenovo G550 laptop. Same problem and I got it fixed by clearing the short circuit it made in one of the usb ports. One of the pins was bent and touched the edge of the port. I took a tiny flat headed screwdriver, bent the pin to the center where it couldn't make contact with nothing else. Then I pressed the power button and it booted up as if nothing had happened. Remembering this I kept searching for a related problem on my Acer and as I said after 1,5 days I found a tiny contact in one of the ram slots that was bent and touched the neighbour. Again with a small screwdriver I tried to bend it back in to place. Even if it didn't look like original after this it didn't make any "short circuit" anymore and booted up just fine. So whenever you face th problem with a laptop apparently booting but blessing you with a black screen, take a chance to verify if it is free of a short circuit somewhere.

KMerrChick

I had the same issue. Changed out the CMOS battery and it booted up just fine after that. Acer Aspire 5552

3.00 fix.

rutane

I temporarily fixed my 5552g by leaving it on on black screen and putting it under some heat insulation. I xoyld play minecraft for another 8hrs before it froze and refused to boot again. Fried GPU seems to be a feasible explanation.

rutane

I mean until it got hot. But in the end it made my keyboard's connector tape become twisted from heat and malfunction. Ran like this for a month though.