Repair of Acer lap top

[Alex Clayton]

Last year I bought one of the kids a new laptop at a Black Friday sale. She
brought it to me yesterday looking like she used to when she had gotten into
a mess, and said "don't be mad but I think we broke the computer you gave
us".
When it tries to boot it sounds like a key is being pressed and will not
boot. I finally got it too after multiple tries, and got a Word doc to open
and sure enough the g and 6 key were taking off across the page. I finally
got them to stop and then the keyboard would not respond or the touch pad. I
plugged in a USB board and mouse and the mouse worked fine, keyboard was hit
and miss. Then it started acting like I was right clicking every few
seconds. All the keys seem to work, nothing seems stuck so it looks like
maybe the keyboard is shot.
Since I paid less than $400.00 for it and the warranty is done I told her
I doubt it would be worth doing anything with, but we could take it to a
shop I have worked with and ask.
Then this morning Wife tells me she has been researching on line (oh oh
here we go again) and found sites that said replacing the keyboard was
easy. She had to go off to work before she could show me what she found so
I thought I would ask. Are some of these that easy to replace? Any good
places to look at as to checking for the parts? I guess if it was not much I
would not mind trying, nothing to lose. I am just worried that the O/H will
get started buying stuff until she has thrown good money after bad.
It's a Gateway (made by Acer) if that matters. It's the same model as the
one I sent back to Acer a couple times earlier and then finally ended up
having to buy a new license for after they "fixed" it so needless to say
sending this one to Acer is something I would not try.

 

[Paul]

Last year I bought one of the kids a new laptop at a Black Friday sale.
She brought it to me yesterday looking like she used to when she had
gotten into a mess, and said "don't be mad but I think we broke the
computer you gave us".
When it tries to boot it sounds like a key is being pressed and will
not boot. I finally got it too after multiple tries, and got a Word doc
to open and sure enough the g and 6 key were taking off across the page.
I finally got them to stop and then the keyboard would not respond or
the touch pad. I plugged in a USB board and mouse and the mouse worked
fine, keyboard was hit and miss. Then it started acting like I was right
clicking every few seconds. All the keys seem to work, nothing seems
stuck so it looks like maybe the keyboard is shot.
Since I paid less than $400.00 for it and the warranty is done I told
her I doubt it would be worth doing anything with, but we could take it
to a shop I have worked with and ask.
Then this morning Wife tells me she has been researching on line (oh oh
here we go again) and found sites that said replacing the keyboard was
easy. She had to go off to work before she could show me what she found
so I thought I would ask. Are some of these that easy to replace? Any
good places to look at as to checking for the parts? I guess if it was
not much I would not mind trying, nothing to lose. I am just worried
that the O/H will get started buying stuff until she has thrown good
money after bad.
It's a Gateway (made by Acer) if that matters. It's the same model as
the one I sent back to Acer a couple times earlier and then finally
ended up having to buy a new license for after they "fixed" it so
needless to say sending this one to Acer is something I would not try.

Steps 5 through 8 here, show how to remove a typical keyboard.

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/ToshibaA65/satA65_1.htm

The securing strip is the hard part.

Not all laptops will do that quite the same way. You
should look on the Acer site, and see if there is
any documentation to speak of. I wouldn't expect any,
but you won't know until you try.

On some of the laptop sites, they have a web site for each
geographic region. And put different model numbers on the
different sites. And that can make it hard to find the
download or documentation page.

Searching on whatever the model number of your machine is,
might even dig up pictures of it being taken apart.

Or look on Ebay, for that model, and see if someone has
a "cracked screen" unit. If there are pictures of it,
it might be half taken apart.

Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

Last year I bought one of the kids a new laptop at a Black Friday sale. She
brought it to me yesterday looking like she used to when she had gotten into
a mess, and said "don't be mad but I think we broke the computer you gave
us".

I thought I would ask. Are some of these that easy to replace? Any good
places to look at as to checking for the parts? I guess if it was not much I
would not mind trying, nothing to lose. I am just worried that the O/H will
get started buying stuff until she has thrown good money after bad.
It's a Gateway (made by Acer) if that matters. It's the same model as the
one I sent back to Acer a couple times earlier and then finally ended up
having to buy a new license for after they "fixed" it so needless to say
sending this one to Acer is something I would not try.

The model number is apparently a secret, but if it's like the HPs,
Dells, and Toshibas that I've worked on, the keyboard removal is about
2 stars on a 5 star scale. Not as easy as replacing the battery, hard
drive, or RAM, for example, but much easier than many of the other
possible repair tasks. You can probably do it if you have decent
vision, steady hands, and the required tools.

 

[Alex Clayton]

The model number is apparently a secret, but if it's like the HPs,
Dells, and Toshibas that I've worked on, the keyboard removal is about
2 stars on a 5 star scale. Not as easy as replacing the battery, hard
drive, or RAM, for example, but much easier than many of the other
possible repair tasks. You can probably do it if you have decent
vision, steady hands, and the required tools.

The Gateway model is an NV52

When it was going back and forth to Acer they were listing it like this:
NV5207U-US W7HP64/QL65/GO/320/6L2.2/15.6"/GTW

Any idea of a good place to check with as far as buying the stuff? If it's
cheap enough I will give it a shot since if it does not work it's no loss.

 

[Char Jackson]

The Gateway model is an NV52

When it was going back and forth to Acer they were listing it like this:
NV5207U-US W7HP64/QL65/GO/320/6L2.2/15.6"/GTW

Any idea of a good place to check with as far as buying the stuff? If it's
cheap enough I will give it a shot since if it does not work it's no loss.

Thanks for the additional info. www.notebookparts.com refers to it as
the Gateway NV5207u.

I've only bought laptop parts off eBay, (been lucky, perhaps, that I
knew what I needed and got what I expected), but there are many retail
places selling online. You may get lucky if you find the same or
similar model on eBay, otherwise broken but with a good keyboard.

If you go with an unknown online retail store, you might check them
out at www.resellerratings.com before ordering to see what others have
to say.

 

[Paul]

The Gateway model is an NV52

When it was going back and forth to Acer they were listing it like this:
NV5207U-US W7HP64/QL65/GO/320/6L2.2/15.6"/GTW

Any idea of a good place to check with as far as buying the stuff? If
it's cheap enough I will give it a shot since if it does not work it's
no loss.

There is a disassembly video here.

The keyboard is removed, at about the 40% point in the video.

Paul

 

[Alex Clayton]

Thanks for the additional info. www.notebookparts.com refers to it as
the Gateway NV5207u.

I've only bought laptop parts off eBay, (been lucky, perhaps, that I
knew what I needed and got what I expected), but there are many retail
places selling online. You may get lucky if you find the same or
similar model on eBay, otherwise broken but with a good keyboard.

If you go with an unknown online retail store, you might check them
out at www.resellerratings.com before ordering to see what others have
to say.

Thanks looks like a possibility. Ebay had several new boards for $35.00.
Don't see any replacement touchpad's but I guess when I get it apart I can
see if it can just be disconcerted and she could use a USB mouse if it still
is screwing up after the new board. May be some crap in there if I get
lucky. For that price I will give it a shot and see if I can actually make
the damn thing work again.
Thanks, I had never tried to find stuff like this before.

 

[Alex Clayton]

There is a disassembly video here.

The keyboard is removed, at about the 40% point in the video.

Paul

Thanks that was interesting, and may make putting it back together a
success. This might actually be kind of fun to try.

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

Last year I bought one of the kids a new laptop at a Black Friday sale.
She brought it to me yesterday looking like she used to when she had
gotten into a mess, and said "don't be mad but I think we broke the
computer you gave us".
When it tries to boot it sounds like a key is being pressed and will not
boot. I finally got it too after multiple tries, and got a Word doc to
open and sure enough the g and 6 key were taking off across the page. I
finally got them to stop and then the keyboard would not respond or the
touch pad. I plugged in a USB board and mouse and the mouse worked fine,
keyboard was hit and miss. Then it started acting like I was right
clicking every few seconds. All the keys seem to work, nothing seems
stuck so it looks like maybe the keyboard is shot.
Since I paid less than $400.00 for it and the warranty is done I told
her I doubt it would be worth doing anything with, but we could take it
to a shop I have worked with and ask.
Then this morning Wife tells me she has been researching on line (oh oh
here we go again) and found sites that said replacing the keyboard was
easy. She had to go off to work before she could show me what she found
so I thought I would ask. Are some of these that easy to replace? Any
good places to look at as to checking for the parts? I guess if it was
not much I would not mind trying, nothing to lose. I am just worried
that the O/H will get started buying stuff until she has thrown good
money after bad.
It's a Gateway (made by Acer) if that matters. It's the same model as
the one I sent back to Acer a couple times earlier and then finally
ended up having to buy a new license for after they "fixed" it so
needless to say sending this one to Acer is something I would not try.

If the USB keyboard/mouse activity was still erratic even when not using
the built in keyboard a good test would be to unplug the internal
keyboard/touch pad from the motherboard and verify the system will then
work reliably using the USB keyboard and mouse. If so then unless the
motherboard itself is damaged a replacement keyboard/touch pad should
bring the system back to normal. Yes they are usually easily replaced
on most systems and with a little searching the parts can be located new
or used based on your needs.

 

[Stan Brown]

Then this morning Wife tells me she has been researching on line (oh oh
here we go again) and found sites that said replacing the keyboard was
easy. She had to go off to work before she could show me what she found so
I thought I would ask. Are some of these that easy to replace?

Keyboards are not hard to replace if you have patience and tools.

But I am not at all convinced that's your issue. You plugged in a
USB keyboard and it too had problems. That points to motherboard or
bad RAM or something of the sort, in my opinion.

You can easily test RAM to eliminate that as a possibility. On a
known good computer, go to memtest.org and download the fee memory
tester. Burn it to a CD and then boot the problem computer from that
CD.

When I was getting blue screens on my XP computer four or five years
ago (an Acer laptop, coincidentally), Memtest found the exact bad bit
in just a few seconds. If you let Memtest run for a complete test
(20-30 minutes) and it doesn't find anything, you can at least be
confident the RAM is good.

 

[Char Jackson]

Keyboards are not hard to replace if you have patience and tools.

But I am not at all convinced that's your issue. You plugged in a
USB keyboard and it too had problems. That points to motherboard or
bad RAM or something of the sort, in my opinion.

I was thinking the same thing but didn't want to say anything.
Keyboards are fairly low tech, but I wanted to allow for the chance
that something heavy may have been dropped on the keyboard, damaging a
couple of areas and simulating continual key presses at those spots.

 

[Alex Clayton]

I was thinking the same thing but didn't want to say anything.
Keyboards are fairly low tech, but I wanted to allow for the chance
that something heavy may have been dropped on the keyboard, damaging a
couple of areas and simulating continual key presses at those spots.

Well I guess I will have to give it a little thought then. I guess if I buy
a board and it's still FUBAR I can tell the wife I tried and toss it.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Thanks that was interesting, and may make putting it back together a
success. This might actually be kind of fun to try.

For sure! Good luck.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

When I was getting blue screens on my XP computer four or five years
ago (an Acer laptop, coincidentally), Memtest found the exact bad bit
in just a few seconds. If you let Memtest run for a complete test
(20-30 minutes) and it doesn't find anything, you can at least be
confident the RAM is good.

I'm not so sure. About a decade ago I ran MemTest for several hours on a
problem computer and got a clean bill of health. I was convinced that I
had bad RAM, so I took out half of it and the problem went away. I took
the remaining RAM out and put the removed RAM back in and the problem
returned.

New RAM for the bad part fixed the problem.

In ten years, a few things can change, of course - both RAM and
motherboards can be better today, and maybe MemTest has been updated (I
have no info about that).

 

[Paul]

I'm not so sure. About a decade ago I ran MemTest for several hours on a
problem computer and got a clean bill of health. I was convinced that I
had bad RAM, so I took out half of it and the problem went away. I took
the remaining RAM out and put the removed RAM back in and the problem
returned.

New RAM for the bad part fixed the problem.

In ten years, a few things can change, of course - both RAM and
motherboards can be better today, and maybe MemTest has been updated (I
have no info about that).

Every tool has its purposes. The main benefit of Memtest86+ is checking
for "stuck at" faults. That means, a bit in the memory, no longer is
writable, and either has a constant zero or a constant one in it. The
memtest program also has the advantage as a tool, that it tests almost
all of the memory. Only the lower 1 megabyte is untested, because that
area is reserved by the BIOS. By design, Memtest86+ asks the BIOS
about reserved memory, and respects the answer returned by the BIOS.

Memory testing done at the Windows level, isn't as thorough in terms of
percentage of the DIMM that gets tested. But say, you have a memory
timing problem, a bus marginality, a Northbridge with too-low operating
voltage or the like. Then, you want a different tool for stability testing.
And Prime95 is what I'd recommend for that. And if Prime95 won't test a
large enough area of RAM, you can boot a Linux LiveCD, download Prime95 for
Linux, and run multiple copies at the same time (make a separate folder
for each copy, where they store their variables). I've run four copies, to
split usable memory into quadrants, and used that as a means to roughly
isolate to the nearest RAM stick. I was seeing consistent (dynamic)
failures from a certain area of memory, yet Memtest86+ had passed it.

Prime95 does a math computation with a known answer. It's a stress test
(makes the hardware warm), as well as a good consistency check. I feel
in the case of your RAM stick that passed the Memtest86+ test, you
would have failed Prime in less than a couple hours.

Paul

 

[Stan Brown]

Every tool has its purposes. The main benefit of Memtest86+ is checking
for "stuck at" faults. That means, a bit in the memory, no longer is
writable, and either has a constant zero or a constant one in it. ...

But say, you have a memory timing problem, a bus marginality, a Northbridge with too-low
operating voltage or the like. Then, you want a different tool for stability testing. And Prime95
is what I'd recommend for that.

Interesting stuff. Thanks, Paul!