Acer 315 probable bad battery causing continuous restart, where to get diagnostic messages?

My Acer 315 (3 yrs old) suddenly started to restart before or after login. I could not spot any error messages what was happening. At any point the chomebook would just go blank and restart after few seconds. Googled and tried powerwash. Then tried recovery, but was not getting "recover from usb drive" prompt. At this point was ready to give up!

Again googled and one video suggested to disconnect battery to chek if static electricity build up is an issue. Didnt resolve. But as video suggested connected power adapter directly with battery disconnected. It worked! The chromebook was working perfectly fine. So hoping the battery is bad, ordered a new one and installed it. Right now (only been few hrs) the chromebook is working fine. Fingers crossed!

I'm still concerned as to why bad battery was causing restart even through power adapter was directly connected! Is there some hidden interface where I can get detailed error messages?

Accepted answers

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1198209#Comment_1198209

There is this comand: 1. Hit Ctrl + Alt + t to open the Crosh. 2. Type 'battery test' and hit Enter. 3. Your battery's health, measured in a percentage out of 100 percent. To get full battery reports:

https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/how-to/how-to-check-the-battery-health-of-a-chromebook/

Rule of thumb if the full battery capacity <30% of the design capacity or the Initial full charged capacity (100%) when first used it means you will get less than 1 hour work done on battery and that soon the system may shut down unexpectedy to avoid data loss or because of GPU/CPU power issues. When a 3 cell battery has a dead cell it can block the power adapter from providing power the motherboard, then disconnecting the dead battery can help to power up your laptop with the adapter (not every laptop model will work with a power adapter only).

I am not really an Android person (or Google fan), barely can operate my new Galaxy M23 Smart phone, I find Windows so much more powerful, easier to operate and to control, IMO also more free Windows apps and programs are available than for Apple and Androids.

All comments

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/684393/acer-315-probable-bad-battery-causing-continuous-restart-where-to-get-diagnostic-messages

Depending how good the original battery was (many cheap refurbished batteries on the market). 3 years can wear a battery capacity to near zero (dead) if not maintained properly like letting it frequently drain below 5%.

MakV

Thanks Puraw!

I had bought the chromebook new. So it was a brand new battery at the time. My daughter does use it mostly on battery at school and home and we plug it in every night.

Is there any battery capacity indication in ChromeOS or implemented by Acer? When chromebook started to restart constantly it would have been nice to get some message that this was related to battery!

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1198209#Comment_1198209

There is this comand: 1. Hit Ctrl + Alt + t to open the Crosh. 2. Type 'battery test' and hit Enter. 3. Your battery's health, measured in a percentage out of 100 percent. To get full battery reports:

https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/how-to/how-to-check-the-battery-health-of-a-chromebook/

Rule of thumb if the full battery capacity <30% of the design capacity or the Initial full charged capacity (100%) when first used it means you will get less than 1 hour work done on battery and that soon the system may shut down unexpectedy to avoid data loss or because of GPU/CPU power issues. When a 3 cell battery has a dead cell it can block the power adapter from providing power the motherboard, then disconnecting the dead battery can help to power up your laptop with the adapter (not every laptop model will work with a power adapter only).

I am not really an Android person (or Google fan), barely can operate my new Galaxy M23 Smart phone, I find Windows so much more powerful, easier to operate and to control, IMO also more free Windows apps and programs are available than for Apple and Androids.

MakV

Hi Puraw!

Thanks for the details. I will try the battery test command.

re android etc … I ve been lifelong windows laptop/desktop user. My daughter uses this chromebook. Their school district has standardized on chromebooks and google apps. There re some nice features and simplicity about chromebooks. They are much faster to start for one thing. That's why the sudden restarting kind of unsettled me. There was pretty much no error messages so was not able to figure what was going on.

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1198432#Comment_1198432

My wife argues the same (daily) with her new IPad, I admit that the IPad never fails, battery life is awesome and her WIFI works always and maybe even faster than my 2020 Aspire5 (same router). The bad thing is the telemetric (iCloud) of IPad and Internet browsing (highly biased, no comparison to W11 Edge). She can never find anything (files and e-mail attachments disappear, Black Hole) and I have to do her internet browsing and e-mail the links to her. Office is another caveat of Androids I could not live without my Outlook desktop configured as MAPI with Yahoo as server.

Thanks for the Answer mark.😉

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