Predator Helios 500 no longer working currently in power on??

Power on process is very flaky. Sometimes power button does nothing at all. Other time it flashes on and right off. Sometimes it comes on and lights on keyboard go on going left to right, but nothing after ward. On rare occassions now, it will show the Predator Screen icon, and machines power off. Very rarely would it seem to start windows boot, but comes up with message that pin is no longer available, and logging into the outlook account comes with a message.

Before had notice that the on board wifi card was showing in device manager as not working, but there, and other times it wasn't listed at all. An USB wifi card seemed to work, and wired connection worked. Had also notice that sometimes bluetooth showed as device and sometimes note..

Tried to activate F12 key to work, but could never get it to work. Even using F2 to get in is very iffy. Did put a Fedora 37 boot USB in, and did once get the F2 to change boot option to boot from it, and it seemed to boot the Fedora 37 find. In looking at system, the /proc/partitions did not show the 500M NVME disk that is suppose to have the windows, but did show the 1T SSD drive that is windows Data and the 8G USB Flash that Fedora 37 was loaded from. Then tried to restart, but machine is now back to doing nothing at all with power button??

So, seems to be some kind of hardware issue with machine?? Machine had Windows 10, but at some point it upgraded to 11, but brother says he never selected option to do that. Just restarted one day, and it came p with message that it was upgrading to 11?

I've got an Aspire E1-731 (VAG70_HC_0685_2.29) that is years older and still working fine. With Fedora 36, and the windows 7 (mostly unused) on a 1T SSD drive.

The Predator notebook was much more expensive, and has been nice until now.

Wonder if any process that might help figure out what is causing issue. Recently had to fix an IBM R61 notebook for friend. Seemed machine wouldn't boot to the XP, but turned out to be simple solution. Turned out the battery was totally dead, so just removing it completely from machine, the system booted fine. Tried that on Predator, but it was still flakey with battery disconnected. Mostly did nothing at all, but occassionally would power on lights, but not boot. If power is disconnected, the yellow/orange light comes on for a while on connecting power, but will shortly change to blue after few seconds to few minutes.

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JackE

What happens when you turn machine on and IMMEDIATELY press and hold the ALT key while mashing the F10 key?

msetzerii

Had found what has appeared to fix the strange power on proces that was very random.

Booted to the live Fedora 37 boot USB, and after turning off Secure boot and setting to AHCI was able to see the NVME 256G NVME. Tried to mount in Linux, but it reported errors with device. Used ntfsfix on it, and that fixed whatever the issue was with mounting the nvme partition. So, now the boot process seems to be stable. It does come up, but just comes up with message that pin is not available, the then login with outlook.com id just says that it is in process of changing security, so dead end for 30 days? Was set to use brothers phone, but it never sent code, so only option was to change access from phone to his gmail account? No other options, so looks like machine is dead for booting till that gets resolved, which looks like 30 days is only option. Got an HP notebook with Windows 11, and it sometimes says it is sending code to my phone, but I never get any code, so it is also dead for things like that?? MicroSoft at there best.

Did setup a Fedora 37 on a 128G Flash, but ran into a strange issue. Install when fine, but on reboot Acer would not see USB as an option. For some reason, the default setup created an EFI System partition as 600M FAT32. I resized it to 63M FAT16, and then the Boot option in bios would recognize it, and have it boot. Found bios to be confusing, since many options don't show up unless other options taken first. Have no ideal why the Default created a 600M Fat32 for EFI System, or why the Acer didn't like it.

So, the ALT-F10 does show waiting message, and then gives options to continue with Windows 11 boot, but doesn't get anywhere since PIN and reset haven't been done. Does seem to be able to boot to the Windows 11 signin regularly with secure boot, on or off, so seems something had message up the NVME boot to a weird state. The 1T SSD drive just has a data partition, and doesn't have the Windows 11?

Did see a post on install UBUNTU on Acer, and set to change to AHCI instead of other options, but didn't say why or what those other options actually do..

So, how have the booting up power working, but Windows 11 will not login. booting to the Fedora 37 works, but USB is not as fast as SDD or NVME drive.