My Acer Aspire E5-575-53vg randomly shuts down on battery after installing a secondary SSD

Joha89

I own an Acer Aspire E5-575-53vg. The laptop is about 4 years old. I haven't made any hardware changes to it previously. My laptop has an NVME m.2 (256 GB) installed as the main drive, but it also has a SATA 2.5" connector.

I recently bought a Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SATA 2.5" SSD to use as my secondary hard drive and increase my storage space. After installing the SSD, I started to notice some problems with my laptop when running on battery. Everything works just fine as long as the laptop is plugged in. However, when the laptop is running on battery it starts to shut down at random times. Sometimes it shuts down after 10 minutes, sometimes after 30 minutes or more, but it could also happen that it keeps running until the battery is empty. If it shuts down at random times before the battery is empty, I can restart the laptop normally and the battery icon is still showing that the laptop is charged. I can't really see a pattern in this behavior, but it started occurring as soon as I added the new SSD.

I actually removed the SSD yesterday to see if the problem goes away, but somehow the problem persists. When I added the hard drive the first time I turned the laptop off, but didn't disconnect the battery. Could the SSD have somehow messed with the battery circuits? Or could it just be that the battery is dying of age? Seems weird though that this problem started exactly after adding the SSD. I also tried to adjust the power setting when plugged in and on battery, but it didn't help. Is there anything else I can try?

WillieF

you may have read about this already, but i'll repeat it here anyway in case it helps. There's a small pressure switch that activates when you remove the back cover to add memory, SSD, etc.  When you open the cover this switch makes sure the laptop turns off so you don't burn it up.  Well, after i added memory to my E5-575-33BM it started to randomly shut off, similar to your story.  Turns out that when you open that cover for the first time (and break the factory seal) the cover doesnt seat like it used to and fails to push that button down sufficiently. Whenever the chassis flexes just so much, it releases pressure on that switch, turning the laptop off.  Someone in a thread suggested that i pad up the small pad that pushes down on that button. So i removed the cover, added some electrical tape to pad up the pad, and reinstalled the cover. problem solved. Never shut off again. For some reason, the cover jsut doesn't sit like it did from factory when you first open it up to modify somethign inside. Well, i hope this helps in some way.