DeadMy Acer Swift SF514 (17 months old) appears to have died.?

AlanL58

Hi,

My Acer Swift SF514 (17 months old) appears to have died.

I run dual operating systems with Win10 as supplied and Kubuntu. I was installing Kubuntu KDE updates when the laptop suddenly seemed to switch off.  I had the power supply plugged in and this showed blue, but the red/orange power LED was flashing. I held down the power button for about 5 secs and the machine shut down but now it won’t restart.

I somehow doubt that a software update would kill the machine and, even if the Kubuntu update didn’t go to plan, I would expect to be able to boot into windows. Does anyone have any ideas?

Looking at the wwweb the most popular reset seems to be to disconnect the battery and then restart.  I splashed out on some small Torx screwdrivers and took off the back so that I could do this but this hasn’t worked. The battery seems fine at around 15.8V, two connections show 3.18V, one shows about 140 mV (charge status?) and one shows not a lot (just a few mV relative to the black 0V connections).

I sort of suspect the power button but this is part of the keyboard which looks a lengthy process to investigate.

I’d like to try a method I found on the net which involves shorting the first two keyboard ribbon connectors together but I don’t know which connector this is without taking out the m’board.  Would this work on the SF514 and can anyone tell me how to locate the keyboard connector on the main board?

Thanks for any help, Alan

[Edited the title to add model name ]

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/672471/dead-laptop

What is the exact Swift SF514-xx model number that you have, is it the SF514-51-52-53-54 T or G? As yes, I know that you disconnected the battery, but you also need to disconnect the RTC/bios battery plug, and then short the + and - pins on both batteries then leave them unplugged for 5 min and then reconnect both batteries and reboot the laptop.

If the power switch is broken, then you need to trace the power cable to the plug, where you can short the pins so that the laptop powers on, this is a very involved process, so you really need to have knowledge of what you are doing, as that is the only way to test the power button functionality, otherwise you need a new keyboard to do this. Let us know if it powers on, as and if it doesn't, then there are other internal power issues that need to be checked and analyzed as you could have either a DC-in jack port problem, a 19v primary power circuitry issue, a 3.3v issue that all contribute to the startup process of your laptop. Good luck and hope this helps you out.

SF514-54G motherboard

AlanL58

Hi Steven,

Thank you for the advice. My problem remains but this has been of some help.

After shorting out the main battery and bios battery terminals I tried a restart to no effect. I plugged in the power adapter and the power LED which is normally blue was showing orange. If I depress the power button then the LED blinks out after a count of six (approx 6 secs). This was quite consistent until the LED turned blue but this tells me that the problem is not with the power button.

Mine is SF514-55T (photo below with batteries disconnected) I believe the keyboard ribbon connector is just below the wifi adapter - is it worth trying to short the first pin to the second?

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1152135#Comment_1152135

Are the fans on? As if they are then it could be in your 3.3v startup chip, screen eDP cable/plug or the actual screen that need looking at. As when you say that

“I plugged in the power adapter and the power LED which is normally blue was showing orange. If I depress the power button then the LED blinks out after a count of six (approx 6 secs). This was quite consistent until the LED turned blue but this tells me that the problem is not with the power button.”

It's in the primary 15.4V and the 3.3V circuitry stages that there is a problem and that has to be traced with a multimeter to what is wrong in those circuitry stages, which if you have no experience then get an experienced technician to look at the problem and fix it, as your symptoms are very much internal and can't be fixed with resetting anything. If you have the experience and tools, then from the DC port (top right corner of your above caption) trace the 15.4V and 3.3V stages and check if any circuitries are not shorted, burned (which they don’t look like they are) but a mosat or capacitor could be shorted as that is where your problem is. Also it could be an eDP cable/plug at the mobo end or screen end that could be causing this problem too, so check that. Also there are may guides on "pc's turning on and then turning off" so look at those too.

billsey

Ooo, don't short the terminals on the battery. Short the terminals on the motherboard with the battery disconnected. Bad things happen when you short a battery! If the power status light is blinking it thinks the battery is bad. The battery might not actually be bad (unless you actually shorted it out, see above) but modern batteries have their own internal data tracking their life, and that can get confused. Usually the battery reset pinhole (upper right red arrow on this base view:

is used to reset the battery. No need to tear it apart for that. With everything disconnected, including the charger, you press and hold the button under that pinhole for 15-30 seconds, then release and wait a few minutes before plugging only the charger in. Wait for the full battery indicator and then try turning it on normally. If the issue is only a confused battery that should get you back up. That process does the same function as opening the case, disconnecting the battery and bleeding all power from the motherboard, then reconnecting the battery and reassembling the system.

AlanL58

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1152149#Comment_1152149

Hi Steven,

The fan doesn't come on when I press the power button. From memory the fan only starts up after the unit has been running for a while, presumably as the processor comes up to working temperature. A thought on my part.... If I get a quick blink of the battery status light after six seconds of holding down the power button, does this mean that the computer is alive and able to sense this six second button press? Maybe the processing circuitry is OK and I'm just not seeing anything on the screen?

I'm afraid the rest of your response didn't make much sense to me. Is a mosat a bit like a mosfet or maybe its and Israeli security force for computers? I haven't a clue what an eDP cable or what the mobo end might be. I can see that the screen connector is next to the screen hinge at the top right of my photo but that looks to be perfectly sound. It doesn't look like the sort of thing I want to be playing with as I'm not sure how the clamping mechanism works and I wouldn't like to break it. (Not a big fan of acronyms - GE have an acronym for virtually everything and some people can construct a whole sentence without using a word in English!)

AlanL58

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1152353#Comment_1152353

Hi Billsey,

Thank you for the warning, but we're perfectly safe - I shorted out the positives to the zero volts on the main board with the batteries disconnected. Interestingly, after each time I did this, the +ve terminals would begin to climb back up at about 0.1 mV/sec. There must be an awful lot of spare electrons floating about on there!!

After googling fixes of this nature (this sort of problem seems to be very common) I tried the battery reset to no avail and felt sure that a battery disconnect was the only other thing to try at this point. Check out StevenGen's thread on this problem where he suggests pulling the bios battery plug too. Didn't work😞.

Do you know if there would be any test points on the main board which tell me if the computer is actually alive but I just can't see anything?

billsey

Yeah, we don't have exposure into potential test points, they typically don't get that detailed in the Service Guide, since they expect repair depots to just replace bad boards. As to spare electrons, there are a lot of little capacitors hanging out, mostly decoupling caps for EMI reasons, and they take a while to fully bleed off. That's why I have you wait between the battery reset and plugging the charger back in.

AlanL58

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1153240#Comment_1153240

Hi Billsey, Steven,

I sorted this. I took the plunge and removed the main board (I was a bit worried about all those ribbon cable connectors) and it paid off. On the reverse side of the board where the power supply plugs in, there is a small area shielded by aluminium foil. When I peeled this back, there was some crystalline substance all over the circuitry. If I had to guess, I would say it was galvanic corrosion but there was no electrolyte. Anyway, cleaned it up with some alcohol and a q tip and blow me down it restarted when I put it back together 😁

billsey

It might have been some spilled contaminant that was just conductive enough to cause the issue or corrosion built up from something in the environment. At least you have it sorted now and know what to look for if it reoccurs.