Hi all
My wife purchased an Acer Aspire 5 (A515-56) in November 2021. Initially it had Windows 10. From the very beginning it would randomly crash - the screen would get pixelated with different colours and the laptop would freeze up. The only way to fix it was a hard reboot.
She got tired of it crashing all the time and went back to using her old laptop. At one point I tried upgrading to Windows 11 but that was doing a similar thing.
We left it sitting there for ages and I never got around to trying to diagnose the problem. Recently she decided she wanted to start using it again and even after applying all the Windows updates it was still crashing regularly.
I then did a clean install of Windows 11. This behaved a little differntly but still crashes regularly (and randomly). There seems to be no pattern to when it happens. She could be in Chrome or Zoom or anything. The screen goes blank/black but the laptop is still running. The backlight on the keyboard still lights up when you touch the keys. But the only way to get it do anything is to hold the power button for 5 seconds to shut it down. Then it works again for a while after a reboot before dying again.
Basically it's hardly been used even though it's over a year old.
I've tried every suggestion I could find in forums:
- Upgraded BIOS to latest
- Reset BIOS to defaults
- Tested memory from the boot up troubleshooting menu (no errors)
- Ran a graphics test for a couple of hours with Heaven benchmark (no errors)
- sfc /scannow
- Applied all Windows Updates
- Installed Acer Care Center (it reports no new drivers available)
- Installed Intel's latest drivers (although it now reports there are no new drivers available after the clean install of Windows 11)
- Reset with a paperclip at the back
- Tried disabling virtual machine features in the BIOS along with any other settings I could find - but there aren't too many available
- Power drain (although I haven't removed the battery as it is fixed)
- Removed all peripherals - note that it does the same thing whether an external monitor is connected or not
- Event viewer shows no errors (since it doesn't actually crash) - I just see the message when it reboots to say it wasn't shut down cleanly
I've probably tried some other things too but can't think of any more right now. Note that I haven't opened the laptop up yet.
I fear it's a hardware issue. But unfortunately it's out of warranty (because of my tardiness in getting around to diagnosing the problem!).
Does anyone have any other suggestions I could try before I give up?
Thanks
AJD
Some of the relevant specs:
- Part Number: NX.A19SA.006
- OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Home
- Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621
- System Model Aspire A515-56
- Processor 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz, 2803 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
- Embedded Controller Version 1.31
- BIOS Mode UEFI
- Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
