Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-57VR display switches off -- possible battery issue?

I've got an Acer Spin 3 of 3 years old. Since a few weeks, at random moments the screen will switch off and will not switch on again. The laptop continues to work. When I connect an external monitor, it's still operational. Unfortunately, a hard reset/cold reboot will not fix it. The only way I can get it to work again is to unplug it and do a battery reset of 30+ seconds.

I know the battery is not in great shape anymore - it will last mere minutes after unplugging. Considering only the battery reset (inserting a pin through the hole for half a minute) seems to work, is it likely that replacing the battery would fix this issue?

Here's my system info:-

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-57VR
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1035G4 CPU @ 1.10GHz 1.50 GHz
Installed RAM 8,00 GB
Graphics Intel(R) Iris(R) Plus Graphics
running Windows 11

[Edited the thread to add model number to the title]

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Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/713773/acer-spin-3-display-switches-off-possible-battery-issue

Yes, this is probably a bad battery, run a battery report: Paste this in the command prompt: powercfg /batteryreport and open the report with your Edge browser, right click and select "Print to Microsoft PDF", attach the report to your reply, type @Puraw or use "Quote" when you reply so I will get an alert.

Yoeri_G

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1301887#Comment_1301887

Thanks for your quick reply. I've run the battery report and attached it here.

One small update: Since posting this yesterday, the situation has worsened: Even a long battery reset no longer fixes the issue. I've had to connected the monitor permanently.

Thanks for any advice. I hope a definitive conclusion on this will make it straightforward to get it fixed properly. I'll start figuring where to get the battery replaced, provided that's going to be the solution.

battery-report.pdf

billsey

The screen issue isn't likely a battery issue, since a bad battery that presents as too low will shut the machine down or hibernate rather than just turning the display off. Since an external display is working the system itself hasn't been shut down. Your battery is bad, but you also need to deal with the issues with the display. Let's try to get the display working before you purchase a replacement battery, since if the display issue is too expensive to fix you don't want to have just spent money on the battery…

If you move the display back and forth, does it sometimes work and sometimes not? That would point to the issue being a cabling problem between the motherboard and LCD, with that cable being flexed each time you open and close the lid.

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1302008#Comment_1302008

Yes, your battery is bad, get a new 48Wh battery (AP18C8K or AP18C4K): Acer SPIN 3 SP314-54N replacement battery - Laptop battery from Australia (laptopbatterydirect.com.au)

Yoeri_G

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1302039#Comment_1302039

I see your point, but am trying to understand what would explain the fact that while a hard reset (cold reboot) doesn't help at all, a battery reset does.

As for the mechanics, I could be mistaken, but I don't have the impression that it's correlated to moving of the screen: it also happens when the screen is in a static position

billsey

When you do a "battery reset" you aren't actually doing a battery reset, for that you have to jump through a couple more hoops than just the button press. After you have pressed the button for 15 or more seconds, with the charger disconnected, you have to wait a while (15-30 minutes anyway), then plug only the charger in and wait for a full charge indication before it's actually reset. What you have been doing disconnects the battery from the motherboard (which is what the button does) for long enough to bleed off the residual energy, so essentially the same as a full power off, followed by a wait period, before a power on. If your issue isn't related to the eDP cable and it's flex during opening and closing the screen, then it's more likely something in the software that's causing the issue. What happens when in safe mode? Does it still act up? If so you might do a full backup, then a Windows reset to see if that helps. You can always restore the backup to get back to where you are now if there is anything removed during the reset.

Yoeri_G

UPDATE: I have replaced the battery, and it has definitely been an improvement, but the display issue still occurs a lot. Sometimes the laptop boots up fine, but most of the time after the Acer splash screen, the laptop screen goes to black and only the HDMI output lets me work.

On many other occasions however, with the monitor plugged in it's even weirder: The laptop's built-in screen works fine but the picture on the monitor is completely out of sync - just a striped pattern in which it's impossible to make out much. Yet when I unplug the monitor, the laptop screen goes dark.

What gives?

billsey

That still seems to be acting like there is a display issue, not a battery issue.

Yoeri_G

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1315596#Comment_1315596

Oh, absolutely, no doubt. But it's clearly not the perhaps more obvious cause of the flatcable between the base of the laptop and the screen. This beaviour is just so quirky.

billsey

Yes, it is much more likely to be an issue where the images are generated in the GPU than in a physical connection like the cable between the motherboard and display. If it were a physical issue you would not be seeing effects to both the onboard display and an external display. The external HDMI port comes out of a different portion of the chipset: