Is there anything more I can do to repair my Acer Nitro 5 anymore?

HejauxoS
HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

Tinkerer

edited November 2023 in 2020 Archives
I bought a refurbished Acer Nitro 5 off of Amazon with an Intel i5 and Gefore GTX 1050 Ti. It ran really smoothly, running fps games such as Destiny 2 and Titanfall 2. The laptop worked for two months and then two days ago, it stopped working. I did some daily tasks on my acer, left it to eat lunch and came back to continue, however, when I tried to wake it up, it gave me a blank black screen. The fans were still humming and thought that a hard shutdown and boot up might work. When I did that, the acer logo popped up and then the screen went blank, giving me a lit black screen. I tried doing it again and again, producing the same results. I tried going into recovery mode with alt f10 so I could try factory resetting it, however, strange as it may sound, there was no reset function. Only the advanced options were available. I then tried to restore previous versions of windows. I still got the same results. the Acer logo and then blank. the fans were still running, but the screen was blank. I looked up on the Acer community posts and tried what everyone said, like restarting the battery, restore previous versions, and set bios to defaults. Again, I could not factory reset because it never gave the option strangely. All of these methods proved futile. The acer logo, then blank. I then tried the last resort option: reinstall windows. I got a USB HD, got the Windows installing tool, and proceeded to install windows. I went through and put in the windows product key, however, I couldn't install it into any of my Hard Drives I had available. So painfully, I formatted everything and was able to install windows. Then finally, I saw cortana asking me to set up and finally I saw the login screen. I then proceeded to download the programs I had lost, but then as I was searching for each program, the computer froze. The acer continued to hum its fan but the keys wouldn't work. I plugged it into a monitor, but the monitor showed that the screen was stuck, too. the only button that worked was the hard shut down. I gave up for that day and tried it again the next day. I booted up the laptop and tried again. Then miraculously, it worked. I logged in, downloaded my missing programs, and completed some of my daily tasks. Then I got up to eat lunch and when I came back, I was back to square one. I thought I was running my browser with my school website on and nothing else intensive, but the screen showed me the same blank screen that I had experienced the day before. It was like deja vu. I shutdown the computer and booted it back up again. It loaded the acer logo and blank screen. However there was a twist. It gave me the windows sad face screen and said windows couldn't star properly and that they would diagnose my computer, only to say that they couldn't do anything. I looked through the recovery options and FINALLLY saw the factory reset, only to find out that it wouldn't let me. It said that it could not factory reset my computer and that no changes were made, both cloud and local, both keep personal files and remove everything. I tried entering safe mode and I was still given the same result: Acer logo and then blank.
During this time, I had sent a repair ticket to Acer. I thought I would receive an email soon, but didn't so I checked my ticket status and saw that it had been suspended at step two. I am planning to call them soon for some answers or if I could get some answer here. Since the laptop was refurbished, the waranty expired a long while ago so I hope the repair cost(if I get one that is) won't turn out too high.
I hope I can get some answers and I hope this might help someone else who has the same problem. 

Best Answer

  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Answer ✓
    Last and final update: I took the nitro 5 to multiple pc repair places and they all said that since it was refurbished, the board most likely gave in due to old age. So a tip for all: do not buy refurbished laptops. Buy them new. I'm sure if I bought a new nitro 5, it would have lasted me longer. I called amazon to see what they can do and they said they could do a 80% refund since it was past the return date for refurbished items. Having the nitro 5 fixed was not worth it either. All of the pc repair places said that they would charge the same amount as acer themselves to replace the board.
    On the positive note, my nitro 5 performed rather well while it still worked. So for budget laptop gaming, it was pretty good. Just don't buy it refurbished please.

    TL;DR Don't buy refurbished laptops

Answers

  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Update: now the acer will not turn on at all. I am no longer getting the acer logo popping up. It is just a black screen. The screen is not even lit. Only the keyboard and charge light are on. I have much concern now. 
  • Hahaha
    Hahaha Member Posts: 243 Practitioner WiFi Icon
    edited September 2020
    Contact amazon for replacement. Best see if you can get another one from them before you go attempting repairs by yourself.
  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Hahaha said:
    Contact amazon for replacement. Best see if you can get another one from them before you go attempting repairs by yourself.
    I doubt I can send it back again since its been like 2 months, threw away the box, and is refurbished, unless I am mistaken. If there is a way, please let me know. I would like to have this laptop up and running again.
  • batmalin
    batmalin Member Posts: 4,231 Guru
    This looks to me as a HDD issue, get new HDD/SSD and see if the issue is still present.
    Please click "Yes" if I have answered your question.
    Userbench: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/31177158

  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    batmalin said:
    This looks to me as a HDD issue, get new HDD/SSD and see if the issue is still present.
    Well the thing is it already has an SSD and I even added another SSD to increase storage so I don't think it is a hard drive problem.
  • batmalin
    batmalin Member Posts: 4,231 Guru
    Install windows on other drive then and let us know if the problem remains.
    Please click "Yes" if I have answered your question.
    Userbench: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/31177158

  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    batmalin said:
    Install windows on other drive then and let us know if the problem remains.
    I think I specified in the original post that I already reinstalled windows. Maybe to specify, I did install windows in both drives.
  • batmalin
    batmalin Member Posts: 4,231 Guru
    Soooo, you have 2 bootable drives right?
    Please click "Yes" if I have answered your question.
    Userbench: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/31177158

  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    yes and both don't work. Also I cannot really repair this with acer. I recently got a reply saying that I can have standard repair service for about 450 dollars which is quite pricy. 
  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    @ anyone, is there a way to reinstall the entire Acer system as if it came straight from the box? Like it has Nitro sense, or all the other software that it needs? I wonder if the way to fix is to reinstall the entire system as if it came from Day 1. 
  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Sorry @ anyone for the late response. There was a false hope during this time. I was able to finally get my computer to boot up on windows after countless attempts of formatting all my drives. Everything is now cleared. However, I went to leave again for a short period of time and when I came back to wake up my computer after it had entered sleep mode, it wouldn't turn on again. So I hard shutdown the computer and booted it back up again. Then it froze at the acer logo and my heart sank. I was back at square one once again. I formatted everything and reinstalled windows again to my drive. I was able to get back in, but I didn't want to reinstall windows daily just to use my computer. I scanned my hard drives to see if there was anything wrong but there didn't seem to be anything wrong. I made sure my Samsung EVO 1TB was absolutely clear and was below in priority boot. So I called it a day and shutdown my computer. When I returned and booted it up, the acer logo rolled and then I was AGAIN back to square one with a blank black screen, once again. Has this happened to anyone else? I feel that this problem is quite extreme. On top of that I do not have warranty so I cannot repair my laptop without emptying my wallet. I am not sure what to do at this point. I have my drives at the default of defaults and have run out of options that I know of. Is there possibly another option in approaching this persistent problem? Or at least an explanation for this persistent problem? Is it the hardware? the software? or just the computer model itself?
  • Hahaha
    Hahaha Member Posts: 243 Practitioner WiFi Icon
    edited September 2020
    Let's call some more people in here. @egydiocoelho , @brummyfan2 , @andylb
    OP's got some difficult problems. Can you help?
  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Another update after a painful many number of tries:
    So basically on the nth time I formatted the HD and reinstalling windows, I FINALLY was able to get on my computer (yay!) I checked all my hard drives to see if there was anything wrong with them and if anything was causing it to act up. However there was nothing that seemed to be wrong. I was a bit skeptical at first since this false hope happened at first, but then it was working well for the rest of the week. So I thought, 'wow record time! I can actually use my computer!' In the back of my head I was still skeptical and my sneaking suspicions proved correct in that today, It stopped working once again. Upon bootup, I see the acer logo and the loading circles go their usual path and then freeze. My heart sank once again as it once again failed to boot up properly. I tried to restore from a previous version but then it also fails to boot up. I am very very confused on what is going on. Is it my hardware? is it windows itself? is it because it uses an intel core i5? I would like some ideas for what is going on at all. 
  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    New update:
    now the laptop won't boot up at all. There is absolutely no backlight. Its plugged and charged, the keyboard lights up. The computer makes the beeping sound when you unplug/plug in the charger but that's it. Other than that, its like an empty shell. The fans aren't running anymore. The system doesn't heat up anymore. The acer logo is nowhere to be seen. Now what to do...
  • Can you give the exact model of the laptop? Example an515-51-75kz.
    Oi! Eu não sou sou a cortana! Mas estou aqui para ajudar! Hi! I'm not the cortana! But I'm here to help!
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  • HejauxoS
    HejauxoS Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Answer ✓
    Last and final update: I took the nitro 5 to multiple pc repair places and they all said that since it was refurbished, the board most likely gave in due to old age. So a tip for all: do not buy refurbished laptops. Buy them new. I'm sure if I bought a new nitro 5, it would have lasted me longer. I called amazon to see what they can do and they said they could do a 80% refund since it was past the return date for refurbished items. Having the nitro 5 fixed was not worth it either. All of the pc repair places said that they would charge the same amount as acer themselves to replace the board.
    On the positive note, my nitro 5 performed rather well while it still worked. So for budget laptop gaming, it was pretty good. Just don't buy it refurbished please.

    TL;DR Don't buy refurbished laptops