Laptop randomly powers itself off without any discernible cause Aspire E5-575T

Warren_Moore

I purchased an Acer Aspire E5-575T from Target on July 1st of 2018.  It worked perfectly fine for about a year, until it decided to develop a little "quirk": it randomly turns itself off completely, with no prompts or warning, just emitting a soft click as the screen goes blank.  At first I thought it was just a problem having to do with the power system, as it only ever happened when I went to or from having it plugged in.  However, it became apparent as time went on that the problem runs deeper than that...

Now it turns itself off completely at random.  There doesn't seem to be any consistent cause: it will power itself off when it's plugged in or not plugged in, when it's sitting perfectly still or when being moved about, when actively running software or when idle, and when at any power level.  I have ruled out overheating (it can and will turn itself off at any interval from start-up ranging from 1 second to several days).  I have tried full-power-cycling the system (ie. removing the battery from the terminals for 30 seconds while not connected to the mains).  At this point, from what resources I've consulted, the likely causes are 1.) RAM failure, 2.) motherboard failure, or 3.) power system failure.  The first is unlikely (I ran a full memory test and there were no errors), but I'm not ruling it out either.  Can anyone help me?  I appreciate any help that can be offered!

brummyfan2

Hi,
How about the temperatures when it shuts down? Install HWmonitor or similar program and check the temperatures of CPU.
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Warren_Moore

I already ran a temperature monitoring program during one of the spontaneous reboots.  None of the internal system temperatures were above 110F at the time.

Warren_Moore

I did some research in this forum's archives concerning my particular model shutting down randomly, and found a topic from 2018 that may have shed some light on the subject.  There is a toggle switch inside the access panel portion of this particular model, very large, which is quite loose.  It's designed to shut the system off should the back panel be removed for any reason while the system is running.  Since it is so loose, any sort of jostling to it can cause the contact between the panel and the toggle switch to fail and cause a shutdown.  The primary culprit initially is from dramatically moving the system (which I consistently did when taking it off the mains), but the toggle has gotten looser still.  Now it's so loose that simply pressing hard enough on the frame of the laptop in the lower-left corner can jostle it enough to trigger the shutdown.

I have applied a layer of electrical tape to hold the toggle switch more firmly in place, and to keep the button pressed (I'm more than competent enough to turn my system off before I mess with its internals).  We shall see if that solves the issue permanently.