ACER aspire 5542 Black screen

marshmellowjoe

I have an ACER Aspire 5542g and i've had a problem with it lately, when I turn it on, the fan starts running, the harddrive turns on, and the CD drive starts up, the power button LED is on, but all that shows up is a black screen. I have tried the "Take out the charger and battery, hold the power button for 30 seconds", tried switching the RAM, tried taking out the harddrive, and all have been a fail. And I am honestly confused, because some of the time (rarely) it will turn on, and literally everything about the laptop is perfectly fine, and its like nothing happened. Until you turn it off. 

 

Help?

JackE

First, check that your video adapter is OK by HDMIing or VGAing out to a TV or external monitor. Boot up. You may have to toggle Fn+F6 to turn the external display on. Report back on if you get a display on the TV or monitor. Thanks.

 

Jack E/NJ

marshmellowjoe

I tried both a monitor and a TV, neither of them show anything when the laptop is hooked up to them.

JackE

Not a good sign if you tried toggling the external displays with the Fn+F6 or Fn+F5 toggle key combos. But since this seems to be an intermittent problem with your machine, I'm still gonna guess it's a problem with your video ribbon cable rather than your video adapter. So I suggest you remove the battery and pull the screen bezel and hinge covers off the machine. You will note that this ribbon is usually crammed in the hinge area. This ribbon is most vulnerable to conductor trace failure in the hinge area from opening and closing the lid too much. Gently pull the ribbon out of this confining area and see if your lid display returns on powering back up. If not, remove the battery again, and pull the ribbon off the display connector and re-insert. It may be taped in place. Do this a few times to try to clean the contacts. Then test again.

 

Jack E/NJ   

marshmellowjoe

I just tried this (Took me some time) and still absolutely no luck. It is really starting to anger me.

JackE

If you also get no Acer splash screen on any of the displays then your video adapter is suspect. Do you hear any bios error beep codes when the machine first boots? Do you hear any evidence, such as a Windows startup melody, that the machine is booting into the operating system despite no display?

 

The fact that you experienced intermittency suggests to me that this adapter may be a plug in module and not soldered to the MB as in many Aspire laptops. You may want to check if you can remove and re-insert this video card a few time if your machine is so equipped, again to try to clean the contacts. If it's hardwired to the MB, there are other, albeit more drastic, things to try. But first, check to see if it's a plug in video card.

 

Jack E/NJ