I've had a weird problem with my Aspire laptop for a few years now. I would be using it, the screen would flicker once then go black, the keyboard backlight would remain on for a few seconds then it would put itself into sleep mode. Once the keyboard backlight was off, pressing any button would turn the computer back on like normal. Sometimes I could go weeks without this happening, sometimes it would happen multiple times per hour.
I thought problem might be with video card so I disabled it, seemed to work okay for a bit but ultimately made no difference. I also tried doing a factory reset, also didn't help.
Today the laptop was particularly bad (powering off at least once a minute, and often I wouldn't even be able to enter my password before it powered off again). I managed to change the power button and laptop closing settings in Windows, and now when the power flickers rather than coming out of sleep it's just in the same state it was before.
I tried typing continuously while the power flickered to make sure it wasn't just an issue with the display turning off; that's definitely not the case because it was dropping keystrokes from when the power flickered .
I rebooted the laptop into BIOS to see if it was a problem with Windows; the power flickering happens in BIOS as well as Windows.
I do know the laptop has battery problems; it always claiming it's 65-75% charged, but never goes higher than that, and if I unplug it for more than 4 minutes the laptop loses power. At one point I thought it might have been my charging cable, but I've replaced it and am still having the problem.
What are the odds that the battery is the culprit vs something like a loose connection somewhere? Is this something that can likely be fixed with a new battery, or is there something else I can try first?
