Dead as a doornail Acer Aspire 5742Z-4865

I head off to the Philippines at 3AM tomorrow.

I left the ac adapter to my Acer Aspire 5742Z-4685 about a 3 hour drive away.

It shut itself down at critical power. I went to Micro Center in Cambridge MA and bought a 65 watt OEM charger that was supposed to work but it didn't. Thinking it was a bad unit I brought it back and got a second--that too did not work.

I noticed that the input on my Aspirce 5742Z-4685 was 3.42 Amps and that the charger was about 3.07 so I went back and got a 95 watt Kensington charger. The salesperson plugged it in and it started up and co-incidentally there was a mandatory 12 part Windows update. So I waited then disconnected it and came home.

I plugged in the charger and a message came up that it was trying to "recover" so I said yes.

Now it has totally died. *poof* I do get the proper voltage from the charger using a voltmeter so it's not the adapter.

Have I toasted the battery?

When I remove the battery and plug in the adapter nothing.

****! International travel with no laptop really sucks.

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jsflynn603

I don't seem to be able to edit.

I replaced the battery and turned it on. The power light blinks for about 10 seconds then nothing.

jsflynn603

Addendum: I went through the recovery process. It said it would start and turn off and on, but it turned off and simply is dead, in case that helps anyone.

Anyone?

tpaige0991

1st, your computer should be using a 65W adapter. You can know this by multiplying the 3.42A & 19V, but a 95W shouldn't hurt it. It sounds like it is just not charging your battery. Have you tried taking the battery completely out of the computer and trying to run it ONLY on AC power?

jsflynn603

Yes, it does absolutely nothing with the battery out...though if the adapter is plugged in it does blink orange five times.

I think it may have shut down in the middle of a windows update, will that screw up the Bios? and if so, how to recover....

tpaige0991

Try removing the battery and AC power and then press and hold power button for 20 seconds. Refit battery and adapter and try again.

jsflynn603

Done that, 20 second, 60 seconds, press button repeatedly...no change.

linvik

Hi

To me it sounds like 2 different types of issues. First you have some kind of power/charge issue, that's probably down to the adapter not being standard, or not being good enough.

Secondly you seem to have a software issue with your OS, that's probably caused by the computer shutting down during Windows update (since the charger didnt actually charge the battery).

I dont beleive that your BIOS is damaged and I dont beleive any hardware issues to be caused.

I would probably try to do a recovery/restore point recovery on the system since I beleive some driver files may be damaged by the interrupted Windows update. You can access the hidden partition by hitting ALT+F10 or F12 during POST (Acer message on screen) (if I remember correctly), that should take you to a recovery page. Make sure you select the restore option, the full recovery option will also work but it will clean your harddrive..

The thing that u tested with removing the battery and ac adapter and holding down (important) the power button for 60 seconds is called an ATX reset and drains the motherboard for all it's power to be sure it's not a shortcut charge somewhere, if that didnt solve the no-charge issue then you're probably better off with an original adapter or another one.

Hopes this makes sense!

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