Weird problem with Swift 5 SF514-55TA-58NY

I just got a Swift 5, that won't recover back from sleep. When I open the lid, the keyboard backlight comes on, but nothing comes on the screen. The entire system crashes after a minute or so and then I can restart the device with the power button.

Also the keyboard backlight randomly stops working, and resetting the battery with a pin recovers it.

Things I have tried:

1. Reinstalled Windows twice
2. Updated all the drivers (Most drivers were up to date, except for the bluetooth driver).
3. Tried reinstalling windows with a flash drive created with RUFUS, but the ssd wont show up under the drives (something to do with the Intel Rapid Storage driver and Optane) so I have to reset the pc and download windows from cloud (*from the option in the windows settings page).
4. Reset the battery 4-5 times with a pin to recalibrate it, still no luck.
5. Changed the power plan from acer to windows balanced.
6. Under reliability history, it just says that windows has crashed and there wasn't any specific driver crashes or anything.

For the keyboard backlight issue : I have tried pressing f8 and Fn + f8 to change the brightness, it still wont come on unless I reset the battery.

Accepted answers

pelipper

It was a hardware problem. I got the laptop replaced and the new one works just fine.

Also if anyone is wondering how to install windows from a flashdrive on any these laptops (with tigerlake cpus), just download and extract the Intel IRST drivers onto the flashdrive with the windows iso. When the drives don't show up, Click on Load Driver , and browse to point to the folder inside the IRST driver folder in the flashdrive. Select Intel RST VMD Controller 9A08 (TGL) and then click Next to load the driver and see the drives.

All comments

Commodore_1995#

Can you inform the version of the bios? Also, does the same problem occur when disabling fastboot in the bios and fast startup in the power options? When the problem occurs, write down the time and look for any errors in the windows event viewer.

pelipper

The bios version is 1.03. (and the only version available).

I didn't try disabling fastboot in bios, but I will try that. But I did try disabling fast startup in the settings which alone didn't help.

As for the 3rd question, as I said in my 6th troubleshooting step, it only shows generic errors -- system wasn't shut down properly.

Thanks for replying!

Commodore_1995#

Go to the main bios tab and disable fastboot.

pelipper

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/kj/7sqy75r5nwly.png

This is the error it shows after a fresh install (this time from a flash drive). Happened when it went to sleep and then crashed.

pelipper

So, I disabled fastboot from the bios , and updated the Intel graphics driver using Intel Driver and Support Assistant (because Acer drivers are not the latest, and only 1 version is available). {Error code 144 seems to indicate a graphics driver issue when I googled it}.

In both cases, windows still crashes, and the keyboard backlight went out again too.

billsey

This is running with nothing installed but the OS? Usually that type of error can be traced to an app or driver that's acting up. What happens when you try to recreate the issue in safe mode? If it's still there then I'd say the next step is to contact Acer support, since it's more likely to be hardware than software by that point.

pelipper

It was a hardware problem. I got the laptop replaced and the new one works just fine.

Also if anyone is wondering how to install windows from a flashdrive on any these laptops (with tigerlake cpus), just download and extract the Intel IRST drivers onto the flashdrive with the windows iso. When the drives don't show up, Click on Load Driver , and browse to point to the folder inside the IRST driver folder in the flashdrive. Select Intel RST VMD Controller 9A08 (TGL) and then click Next to load the driver and see the drives.

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