Acer E5-576-392H keeps shutting off abruptly

JelaniT

Where do I even begin because this has got to be the worst laptop I've ever come across and thats saying something.

Let's start in November 2018 when I bought the laptop for my mom because she's a light user and needed something to be able to browse the web comfortably, play candy crush and so on. For about 5 months this laptop worked very well for its intended purpose. Good enough battery life and snappy enough for a middle age woman to not get annoyed then suddenly it wasn't good anymore. It started shutting down randomly during use then it got to the point where I would press the start button, it would come on then shut down around 3 seconds later.

Thought this was extremely odd so I did some googling and found out these acer laptops have a switch on the motherboard that if not pressed properly could result in the laptop shuttimg off randomly. Ok I thought this was a simple enough fix, I could pop off the service hatch and have easy access to fix it right? WRONG! My first time opening the laptop there was no switch in sight, the motherboard shipped with a defect. 


Now you might be thinking well thats find you can carry it in to a retail acer store while its under warranty. Well this was also not an option because I bought the device in the US but I live in the Caribbean and I don't have a retail acer store here. And shipping it to a relative to have them drop it off at a store cost 1/4 the laptop's price. 

Basically the laptop has been sitting collecting dust for a year then I decide I'd take it to a computer shop because its out of warranty so why not. The guy in the shop thought he fixed it claiming it was a software issue but not even 2 days later and we're back to square 1.

 Basically I'm at my witts end. I need to find a way to repair this locally and cheaply or its like i spent 400USD for an expensive paperweight. Please i need help because I really don't wanna have to fork out another 400 when this is a perfectly functioning laptop otherwise.

Do they sell the switches by themselves on ebay or anything like that?

JackE

If the spring-loaded safety switch exists, it would not be visible unless the entire bottom cover was removed. It's usually located around the periphery of the RAM modules sockets. The specsheet doesn't show a safety switch on this particular model's mainboard but it could still be there if production changes were made since the specs were published. In my opinion, I think it's safe to assume there is no switch and some other issue is at fault. At this point, I think it's worth a shot updating the BIOS firmware to v1.49 if you haven't done so already from this link. https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7332?b=1 There was some earlier memory incompatibilities reported that might cause this behavior that the update should address.  Jack E/NJ