Hi all,
I'm looking at my mum's Acer Aspire 5520 laptop with Kubuntu installed
that seems to have strange shutdown problems.
I can power the laptop on, but at random times (where t is generally <
2 minutes, sometimes up to 10mins, sometimes as little as 5sec) the
laptop will power down completely with no user intervention. I've seen
this happen while in the Grub boot menu, while Linux KDM login screen
is displayed, while it's booting Linux, while it's running memtest and
even while in the BIOS setup screens. This happens on the battery
only, mains only and on battery and mains power combinations.
At other times, it seems the laptop goes into some kind of sleep state
where the hard drive, power button LED and power state LED flash at
the same time (approx 1s on, 1s off but I've not measured this), and
while in this 'state' pressing space bar 3 times toggles the wifi LED
so that it flashes in the same manner as the power and HDD LEDs.
When Linux does actually boot (rare given the quick power off), it
appears to function ok, other than when powering off or restarting,
the laptop is not actually powered down, and I can still switch
virtual terminals but I cannot type anything in the getty (or whatever
ubuntu uses) login processes.
Some google results suggest the motherboard needs to be reflowed, and
people suggest putting the laptop motherboard into an oven at 200
degrees C for 5 -7 minutes!! :(
The CPU fan does come on and spins a lot in the grub menu (when the
cpu should not be busy): I cannot tell if the CPU fan exhaust is
hotter than normal, but this suggests that perhaps there's an
overheating problem and some sort of thermal cut-out is powering down
the laptop. I cannot see any abnormal amount of dust in any of the
cooling vents, and there's no unusual rattling of the fan.
Any suggestions please?
Thanks,
Srdjan