how can I fix my acer travelmate 280? power problems?

My cient has been experiencing the same problem, During troubleshooting, I have verified that it has the most current firmware, (Flash BIOS R01-A1D) it does as of 07 2006. The fans are running and i blew it out with canned air. Without the battery it seems to run fine.

From other forums i gathered that the battery life is about 18 months, so i'd start there. Try running it on only ac power, and adjust the windows settings so that it does not go into standy and it does not hibernate.

An easy way to adjust bios power settings is to use the notebook utility provided by acer at http://www.acersupport.com/library/ti_note/nbman12328.exe

Also verify that the power cable jack is seated firmly, and does not wiggle. The actual plug is L-shaped and slightly longer than the width of the notebook when it is plugged in if it is verticsl in the jack it can move the jack that is mounted in the motherboard. Sometimes this needs to be resoldered. It can be a real pain to open a laptop. (lots of screws). If the power supply is loose, I recommend having a professional take it apart and resolder it or shipping it back to acer and having it repaired, although the expense makes buying a new laptop look pretty good.

Could also be overheating, you can buy a cooling platform for you laptop at Walmart for about $20 double fan below laptop help to move heat away from laptop. I think it might be worth a try. I was unable to find any fan test for this laptop, but that they could be out there.

Also, i am starting from a clean install of win xp pro. Formatted the hd, to make sure there werent any viri.

So far my travelmate 280 has been running for anout 4 hours getting updates, it is running soley on AC, the power jack is note loose at all, and it is NOT on the cooling platform. And all standy, hibernate features are off, i also set the bios power setting to run at Peak performance, not Max battery.

Oh, for some reason, while i was troubelshooting ealier, I found that when the battery was in and i try to start, it wouldn't, I applied some pressure with the palms of myhand above and below the keyboard, and it started. Something a fellow tech told me to do. It didnt work all the time, so its nothing conclusive, but i did it so im writing it.


hope this helps
q

KCG
July 2006

correction 7737567904

sorry

Terry T.
November 2005

check bios for powersaver modes, check screen savers that may require additional video, check screeen saver modes for hard drive shutdown commands, and also check battery/power supply for correct amperage.

Call me at 7737857904 10am to 10pm central time

Terry T.
November 2005