Power loss altogether?

Same problem here... I could not even get it to stay alive long enough to change bios options. I opened the unit up and found signs that the laptop had been dropped. The heatsing/heat pipe on the cpu had 3 of the 4 mounting points broken off the m/b. This caused the cpu to overheat very quickly. It appears that the mounting posts are weakly soldered onto the motherboard. I repaired the problem by using 3 of the F10 case mounting screws to hold the unsupported arms of the heatsing mount down. now to find some more M2x10 fasteners.
While you are in there, clean the dust bunnies out o fthe fam and heat sink.
To get to the fan,
1: open the laptop fully so the screen is laying flat face up on the desk.
2: carefully pry up the long black hinge cover (the long piece above the keyboard with the power and other buttons)
3: remove the keyboard (2 screws at top) and carefully unplug the flex ribbon cable (unlock cable from connector by lifting up locking mechanism)
4: remove the black plastic cover on the fan, cpu.
5: make sure the cpu heat sink/heat pipe is clean and mounted to the m/b at all 4 corners. In my machine 3 of the mounting posts were broken off)
6: clean the fan.heat pipe radiator.
7: if you remove the heat pipe assembly, clean it well and apply new thermal grease between the assembly and the cpu
8: put everything back together.
cheers
Lawrence Glaister VE7IT
Nanoose Bay BC, Canada

Lawrence Glaister VE7IT
February 2007

I have the Travelmate 4020 and had similar problems until I removed all of the power control options set by Acer in the "add / remove programs". You may need to do the same

Darren
February 2007