Question about Acer TravelMate 290 Notebook
I had the same problem with acer tm290. looking through lots of postings let me find this:
located near the cpu (downside circuit-board) is a little ic. resolded this - all works fine :o)
Posted on Dec 16, 2008
hey thx for the info,
how did u solder the terminal ? I looked at it and they are so tiny!. Did you use special tools ?
Thank you !
i took my regular electronic soldering iron, flush the entire side by side from the chip with fresh solder - then i looked with a magnifying glass if there were any shorts between the contacts. normally this happen not often, but take care about!
if there was a short, i reflush the whole chip-side until the contacts stay o.k.
good luck :o)
...it should hereby maybe also remarked that the fresh solder is (or should be) very fluidy in the beginning. so, it would be there a 'bigger' drop of solder, with that you touch'n'heat all of the tiny contacts between chipside and circuitboard in one time. if the drop becames glue-y, take a bit fresh solder. if there stays too much of solder and causes shorts, take something like solder-sucking-wick (if you don't have yet, maybe contact your local electronicstore for it). but normally you can 'wipe' the whole drop slightly away with the soldering iron (attention to not scrat the contacts away, be careful) and then retry the same procedure again. it is NOT necessary to solder these tiny contacts bit for bit - all together side by side works better. ;o)
hi bitofsalt - you lucky man! i'm glad that you did it! ;o) these machines are stiil running ' n running... booah! greetz, lapdoc
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I had the same problem. But took it to acer service centre instead of trying to fix it myself. The problem is with the motherboard near the power supply area. They struggled to repair it for around a week, then told me that the mother board will need replacement. Replacement mother board costs half of a new laptop.
So I guess thats it, scrap this and buy a new one.
Posted on Jul 19, 2008
Lapdoc , you are the first !!!!!!!Just sold it as you describe and the problem solved.(travelmate 290 booting for 3 seconds and then the screen was going black)
Thank you very much for your post Lapdoc
Posted on Feb 10, 2012
After having the same problem and tried various solutions I finally triede lapdoc's solution and I can thereby verify that this actually work, and my computer is now running 100 % as before the problem happened!
Posted on Jun 19, 2010
Hi.
I had the same problem with my Acer Travelmate 291LMi.
I disassembled my laptop and found out that the problem is on CPU. If you press the CPU cooler the computer works fine. So i remove the screws from cooler and used F6 screws. Now it works fine. If anyone has another idea to fix it, say please.
Hope I had been helpful.
Posted on Jul 21, 2008
Hi.
I had the same problem with my Acer Travelmate 291LMi.
I
disassembled my laptop and found out that the problem is on CPU. If you
press the CPU cooler the computer works fine. So i remove the screws
from cooler and used F6 screws. Now it works fine. If anyone has
another idea to fix it, say please.
Hope I had been helpful.
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Hi all, I'm seeing a lot of people with the same problem, but no solutions! I feel like I have joined a 'Help' community..."Hi my name is...."
Anyway, I too have the same issue, however, I finally got my 290 running again, past the infuriating 'reboot loop'.
- I originally had an issue with the power supply and used a not quite correct replacement, which I recently replaced with the correct power supply.
- Took out the heat-sink, by giving it a cleanup, where it conects to the processor.
- I also gave the female power plug on the laptop a bit of a scratch and blow inside to clear the connectors.
- Once all of this was done, my 290 booted up into XP.
- I then had issues with Root Certificates for ZoneAlarm. This was resolved by going onto Windows Updates.
Now, after all of this my 290 still shuts down when it likes. I strongly suspect overheating, as it is hot (surprise!!) underneath and the fan doesn't kick on at all. The battery reports that it is charging, albeit very slowly, but then it doesn't run under battery only.
My stubborness is gradually wearing away and I suspect I will just go and buy another laptop that will die in 2-3 years and then I'll buy another etc etc all to keep the industry going. I think they are built to last X years which is finely calculated to be 2 days past your warranty...
Posted on Dec 08, 2007
Hey there, I have exactly the same problem. Thanks for your solution. Bending the casing did help me to boot up the laptop. Any other solutions to fix it?
Posted on May 31, 2007
Hi everyone, I've discovered myself also that bending the casing allows a normal boot, but I did not spend more time on it because I've concluded it should be a bad or loose contact inbetween layers of the Mo Bo, so that's it! It is probably related to the power supply area (wich cannot be replaced) that is located just beside the cooler of the processor. Well folks, if someone know where is the loosen trace, please let me know and i'll try to fix it. I'll let you know. Gracias mucho!
Posted on May 24, 2007
Have you thinking about CMOS Battery replacement? Have you try to rerun the discovery CDs starting from scratch with a new format hard drive. Let rty these thing to see what really happened to your laptop. Sometime, the cause is so simple. My frined has an IBM laptop brought to me for a question that why my laptop i suddenly gone everything. I found out that the screw holds the CMOS Battery to sit in place is gone. Therefore, the CMOS Battery is not in place and loose contact. This cause the screen gone blank and the laptop looked like going to die. But only one simple error can made it look bad. So check these simple thing first before diagnose further in detail. I hope this help.
Posted on Apr 04, 2007
You are welcome and thanks for giving me some more hints. Ok, I can figure it out brieftly that your power has bad contact. You may need to check your main board where there is the connection of main power. It may has some bad gap there in contact. About the CMOS battery, the way it is connected to your main board is different from model to model so if you have measure it and it is given you correct output voltage then it may not be a main cause. According to your explaination then I can tell your mainboard functioning is fine, just have bad power supply which is not providing stable power output since your were mentioned that sometime it is good sometime it is bad then you can see the conclusion is power supply is eather had bad contact with the main board or it is unstable. You need to detect more detail in this area to see whether any bad symtom and measure the voltage output of your power supply to see whether it is in specs. If it is failed, then you need a new power supply. The unstable function of your laptop is not logical. It is abnormal but can be fixed. YOUR LAPTOP DEFINITELY HAD POWER SUPPLY UNSTABLE OR LOOSING CONTACT. I hope this help.
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Hi, i have just exprienced something similar with what you are talking about on my Acer tm290. In the earlier few weeks, my computer always shuted down suddenly, and sometimes there was long "beep" sound when reboot. After a few times of the situation, when it's reboot there was nothing shown in the screen, but with a few seconds of the sound from the fan and the light from the indicator.
In my case, I have tried to discharge the battery on the motherboard with a LED and a wire for several seconds. The LED lighted up. I did this just by opening the cover that covers the RAM, and a part of the battery can be seen at the side. I don't know why after doing this the computer can be boot up and run normally. I don't know whether those bad situations would happen again.
Posted on May 30, 2008
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Thank you very much for your reply
Honestly your suggestion about the COMS battery is very wise , Yes I thought about this solution but the COMS Battery looks fine.
I have even measured the voltage and it was about 3 VDC , and its soldered to the motherboard , so there is no way of losing connection.
Regarding the recovery CDs yes I have tried it one time before, There is a fresh copy of windows on the hard disk , but even with this fresh copy of windows the problem still exists , ( I am sure its not an operating system problem )
As I said before, sometimes it loads the window with no problem for few seconds or minutes but whenever you move or touch the pc it will turn off again.
I don't know if this is logical, but I have noticed that if I put the pc on an angle or just put something under the pc in the front it will work , then as soon as I remove it or touch the pc it will go off and keeps on rebooting in a loop.
to make it easier I am including two Pictures; One is the final step before it reboots, and the second for the screen when it goes blank.
Many thanks for your help
Thank you very much for your replay ..
Yes .. power supply bad connections look anther possible reason for this problem ..
I have received funny answer from the Acer technical support I will put it down to read it,.. and I will check the connections of power supply and I will be back .
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Dear Mr Fakhri,
Thank you for contacting Acer Care. This is with reference to your mail regarding the problem you are facing with your TM 291 notebook.
Please check by selecting the "logging to Safe mode" and see if you are able to get in to the windows or not, in case you are still not able to login and it is rebooting, please check by repairing the Windows, In case still it is giving the problem we would suggest you to contact the nearest Acer Authorised Service Provider, An AASP would be able to check the machine thoroughly and suggest a suitable solution. A list of AASP can be found on the URL below:
http://www.acer.ae/acereuro/page6.do?sp=...
Please revert back in case any clarification is required. Assuring you our prompt response.
Regards
After your appreciated suggestion that the problem could be related to the power supply; I have done few steps with no luck so far but something new changed in the behaviour of the pc
First I have resoldered the plug the of power supply just to be sure there was no bad connection in the power supply.
After this I noticed something new; now the pc either runs or not
I mean the rebooting issue doesn?t happen any more !
But what?s new is that whenever I press the on/off switch it starts for less than 1sec then turns off directly , and with this there is always a sound of ( tek tek ) its exactly like a relay opening and closing but I don?t know where this sound is coming from.
Another step I did was to remove the board completely from the case; I held it in my hand just to make sure there is no short circuit because of the case, but nothing changed.
I have noticed that whenever I bend the corner (beneath or on the processor) or press on it the pc will run!
Questions:
What does it mean when the screen goes white blank some time like the pic I have attached before?
Is any of these small boxes a relay that could cause this tek tek sound? Where does it come from otherwise?
Note: When I bend the pc, as explained before, it starts fine without the tek tek sound.
other pic
other pic
Hello Guest
Let me start answering your question about the case ? first of all you have to open all the screw at the back ? be sure when you return them that there is at least 3 size f3 , f6 type.. and don?t forget to remove the CD because there is 2 also under the CD , its good idea that you remove any thing can be removed from back like the hard disk and memory
In the front at the top you have to remove the top cover be small screw,, it has no screw but will find under of it few of them ,,
Now about this problem so far I didn?t find any solution for it ,, one of technical guy in electronics shop told me if you run your Acer for 1 years with no problem you will be so lucky ! I used my Acer for about 3 years ,, so I guess this is it ,, they told me this is normal with Acer you have to think about buying new one ..
Wish you good luck
Hello Guest
Let me start answering your question about the case ? first of all you have to open all the screw at the back ? be sure when you return them that there is at least 3 size f3 , f6 type.. and don?t forget to remove the CD because there is 2 also under the CD , its good idea that you remove any thing can be removed from back like the hard disk and memory
In the front at the top you have to remove the top cover be small screw,, it has no screw but will find under of it few of them ,,
Now about this problem so far I didn?t find any solution for it ,, one of technical guy in electronics shop told me if you run your Acer for 1 years with no problem you will be so lucky ! I used my Acer for about 3 years ,, so I guess this is it ,, they told me this is normal with Acer you have to think about buying new one ..
Wish you good luck
hello i have a acer 291 some problem in that area near cpu onder the board is a chip if you press the chip the laptop work good but if you release the pression on that chip laptop turn off. maybe a bad smd solder.
Hello,
My Acer Travel mate 290 Series is having the same kind of problems.
when i turn it on it comes up with the Acer screen and says press F2 for System optioons.
If i dont press F2 and continue normally the laptop stays on a black screen and never loads please help me!
[email protected]
When i turn on my computer, there is no "acer" screen at startup. Just a mustardy-white colour.
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