laptop freezes at bootup? options

donegal11

My two year old laptop freezes at boot up and I'm nearly sure it's the motherboard. What's the the best option for repair? should I send to the manufacture(acer) or should I get a local repair shop to look at it ? What would be best in terms of cost vs a successful repair?

confusicus

Can you describe what you mean by freezing?

At what point during the boot up does this happen?

Are you able to access the bios or the safe mode select screen?

Most times, if the motherboard fries, the laptop won't turn on. But you can rule nothing out until you give more info.

donegal11

the screen freezes on acer bios logo and I'm not able to access any bootup options. I had problems with the laptop before with a usb malfunctions etc (i ignored them) which would lead me to believe the motherboard just gave up. If It was the motherboard what could I do in terms of repair ? don't want to pour too much money on it to fail again.

confusicus

If it is the motherboard, which it doesn't sound like, 9/10 you're better off replacing the laptop.

My advise would be to bring it to an independent repair shop and ask for a diagnostic. These can be quite cheap.

A while ago, my own laptop completely fried and wouldn't even turn on which turned out to be a motherboard issue. However, it was an easy fix as the motherboard had essentially "tripped" itself.

Diagnostics are cheap. If its an expensive laptop, I'd go that route.

Parsandeman

I second The diagnostics if possible. Dont throw it out just yet. You might be able to fix it

You may need to reflash the bios. This happens with me once or twice a year with my acer zg1 but in that case it doesn't even reach the acer logo, the screen just stays black. Google 'acer black screen of death' if you want to investigate this avenue. Its a known issue with that model.

donegal11

thanks for your replys. I'll send it to local repair shop to see what they can do.

Irish Steve

Hi,

Does it have an Nvidia Graphics chip? There was a (significant) problem a while back with them, the solder connections to the motherboard let go, and depending on which signal it it that's no longer working, all manner of strange things happen.

There are 2 solutions, a reflow or a reball, both of which requre specialist tools to do them, with varying degrees of success, a reflow may fix it for some while, a reball will usually last longer, and depending on the age of the machine, a long term fix may be to get the GPU chip replaced with one from a new batch, they are supposedly better quality.

There are other ideas on various forums, most of them suggesting the use of a paint stripper heat gun, that's sort of a reflow, but using the wrong tool is likely to have bad results.

Overheal

At this point those nvidia-models are several years old, and well beyond the point of economic repair. reflow is a cheap DIY option in these cases, if it is one of the units.

unkel

Overheal wrote: »

At this point those nvidia-models are several years old

And the OPs laptop is only 2 years old. So it is unlikely it is related to the nvidia graphics chip...

@OP - I also would suggest having it diagnosed. Could be as simple and cheap as dodgy / unseated ram. Some shops have a "no fix no fee" policy, meaning free diagnostics

donegal11

turned it on today and it went through to windows update? don't know if that would have anything to do with bootup freeze? scared to turn it of now.