Revo RL 80 almost entirely dead, after power on only fan comes on (at full speed)

markusq

Hi all,

 

When I today wanted to restart my Revo RL80 in the course of a Windows 10 update, it powered down as usual, the screen went black - and stayed so since...

 

More precisely, when I try to power on the system, only the fan comes on, at full speed. Initially, even the power-on light would stay off. I have since opened the unit and cleared the CMOS with the respective jumper, and also disconnected the CMOS battery for a while. After that the same, but plus power light...

 

I have also removed and reseated the RAM, and the SSD. No success.

 

Background info: two weeks ago, I had to exchange the original 500 GB because it was getting massive failures all the time, and put in an 256 GB Samsung EVO SSD. That worked smoothly, apparently. But I could have commited the crucial mistake there - for exchanging the HD/SSD, the unit has to be completely dissassembled, including removal of the CPU fan. When I did that, I found that the heat paste between CPU and fan had gone rather dry. Since I had none handy, I still re-assembled the whole thing, and it seemed to work fine. The unit was on constantly since then, also under heavy load, without problems. But I still fear that the CPU has partially overheated and this killed the system.

 

Any way to diagnose this further? Of course the unit is long out of warranty, but was working just fine with the new SSD.

 

Thanks for any hints,

 

Markus

 

markusq

PS: took out the SSD, it still works when connected to another computer.

markusq

Again replying to myself:

 

I'll write this off now and order a new desktop computer. After having done some Google'ing, I am inclined to believe that a hardware failure is equally as likely as Windows 10 messing up the UEFI bios thing in the course of the update. Too many people have reported machines that were just as dead as mine when they were supposed to reboot after an update. No discernible pattern there, though, for specific machines, or updates, which makes it somehow less likely again...

 

So, to sum up: I am still clueless, and have lost an otherwise perfectly fine computer to an entirely mysterious problem. Very frustrating.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my posts on this, anyway.

 

Regards, Markus

markusq

Reading this: https://support.lenovo.com/de/de/solutions/ht502912, I am now almost sure that Windows 10 update KB3200970 killed my system - there is an interaction between that update and UEFI secure boot, and the latter is enabled by default on the RL 80. The Lenovo states that a BIOS update is mandatory to fix the issue.

 

Can we expect Acer to update the BIOS of a four-year old unit? And even if so, how do I get a new BIOS into a system that won't even get past POST?

 

Sigh.