# Acer Aspire 7520 repeats going and off.



## Dirty Burty

My Acer Aspire 7520 notebook has the following problem:

When pushing the startbutton, the startbutton lights up for a few seconds and then turns off automatically. This cycle keeps on repeating itself constantely. 
Actions taken: Changing the battery; changing the powersupply, changing the RAM; checking every connection on the motherboard.

Is there anyone who can help me with this problem?:4-dontkno


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## Call-Collin

Sounds like bad RAM.


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## Dirty Burty

I already changed the RAM and this was not the problem.:sigh:


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## marcb1

I have the same problem, the issues is the motherboard. their way too expensive to replace so scrap it for parts if you are out of warranty.

sorry


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## Dirty Burty

It is possible that the mainboard is the cause of my problem but there are many owners of this notebook with the same problem. I find it very unlikely that alle these people have mainboard defects.


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## marcb1

I noticed recently that if I fully charge my battery the system will post.
Having worked at Dell as a support tech, I noticed that on laptops the main issues are motherboard related, considering that everything is pretty much built in.

Good Luck!


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## marcb1

I've got some news regarding the issue, looks like the Cmos battery on my laptop is loose, if I press on the middle of my keyboard the laptop starts.

Give it a try, and good luck!


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## dellers

Dirty Burty said:


> My Acer Aspire 7520 notebook has the following problem:
> 
> When pushing the startbutton, the startbutton lights up for a few seconds and then turns off automatically. This cycle keeps on repeating itself constantely.
> Actions taken: Changing the battery; changing the powersupply, changing the RAM; checking every connection on the motherboard.
> 
> Is there anyone who can help me with this problem?:4-dontkno


Hi. Remove the fan and heatsink.Clear fins of heatsink of any dust build up.Now replace your processor and you should be up and running again.This is a common problem with these laptops.Hope this helps.


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## dellers

Dirty Burty said:


> My Acer Aspire 7520 notebook has the following problem:
> 
> When pushing the startbutton, the startbutton lights up for a few seconds and then turns off automatically. This cycle keeps on repeating itself constantely.
> Actions taken: Changing the battery; changing the powersupply, changing the RAM; checking every connection on the motherboard.
> 
> Is there anyone who can help me with this problem?:4-dontkno


Hi. In my earlier reply i told you to replace your processor after cleaning the heatsink.I meant that you should replace the processor with a new one.Best of luck.


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## marcb1

I removed my Keyboard and put a little plastic tab on tip of the C-mos battery, My laptop starts everything now.

Seriously, Give it a try, Maybe you will be lucky like me!!


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## markyd85

Would just like to say thanks you guys. Holding the centre of the keyboard and pressing the power button does the trick.

I will be taking apart shortly to fix the cmos battery problem.

:grin::grin::grin::grin::grin:


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## markyd85

Hi All again,

Was after some advice. Pressing the keyboard in the middle does make the laptop boot. However after removing the keyboard all i can see is a very small battery labeled BATT1 and is about the size of a 5 pence piece.

When holding the keyboard and booting, once i let go the screen goes fuzzy. Could this be a dry joint rather than loose cmos battery??

If so im gonna blast it with a heat gun and see where i get.

Mark


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## markyd85

Any one got any suggestions, could it be the processor? I always thought these things either worked or didn't, the problem I have is intermittent but to get it to boot i have to apply pressure to the board. Doesn't really seem to have an area either pretty much anywhere seems to work. Any help would be greatly received.


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## andrexman1

I have the same problem so I tried to know which part exactly that's when pushed the laptop starts. turned out to be from the bottom near the battery. it's one of the ICs on the motherboard. chances are, it needs soldiering.

I'm sure it's that part, but please if anyone else have any suggestions please help!


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## markyd85

Hi andrexman1 thanks for the reply, okay i will try that see if it fixes it. When you say from bottom by the battery, is it close to the battery connector?


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## andrexman1

Yes it is. it's on the motherboard, but still I'm not so sure which part exactly..


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## flyroast

I have had this same problem and pushing on the keyboard works for me. I am going to get into this baby and see what I can do to fix the problem.


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## Merlintrenton

Hi Flyroast

I have two ACER 7520 Laptops with exactly the same cycling on and off problem as described above on both. They both are presently cycling as described and have done for a number of weeks now. However last week I did manage to get one to boot somehow and then it worked totally ok for hours until automatic windows update overnight rebooted it and is now just cycling again. Did you fix the problem with your laptop yet. 

Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated.


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## flyroast

I was able to stop my computer from cycling. I used my soldering tool to heat the terminals that hold the CMOS battery which is located under the keyboard. Turns out that wasn't the end of my troubles. My laptop would just shut down at random times during the boot cycle and sometimes after logging into windows. I tried using one stick of Memory at a time and found one of the sticks was deffinitly bad. The shutting down problem continued with the assumed good ram stick but not as bad as before. I ordered two new sticks and this still didn't solve the shut down problem. At one point windows ran start up scan and still nothing. I ran the scan again a few days later and this time windows gave me a message that it could not automatically solve my problem and would send a message to microsoft. Cross my fingers I havn't had a problem in the 4 days since I got that message. I'm certainly very happy with the extra performance of a full 4 gigs of ram. I read on boards that people with 32bit systems are not recognizing the full 4 gigs but my computer shows the full amount. By the way, if you don't know how to solder on electrical boards DON'T DO IT YOURSELF


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## Jafo

Hey - I am working on one of these for a friend & it's doing the exact same thing pointed out above. problem is, I have tried the "push the CMOS Battery down" thing but it is not working. I have cleaned out everything (have NOT removed the processor or heat sink yet) & double checked all the connections - still doing the same thing. Any other ideas?


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## Merlintrenton

Hi,

No no luck have had the keyboard off pressed all around the cmos battery etc but nothing does the trick. Would think was something really bad except that since had the fault have managed somehow to get both laptops to work on at least one occassion and worked absolutely fine - not even slow etc, no crashing - until turned off then once again same problem.

Lat time managed to get to work had, had the hard disk out and when put back in booted up ok, but unable to repeat again despite trying, someone somewhere must no what the issue is as there appears to be lots of these laptops with the same issue.

Good Luck.


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## dadamoid

My sons 7520 suddenly started doing the same thing.

I checked all the RAM and other connections, then tried pressing the keyboard in the middle as suggested by some, to no avail.

I did notice that there were two (very quiet) POST beeps each time it restarted and tried to find out what they meant but was unsuccesssful so far. Then I thought I would try something.

The laptop was connected to power and open in front of me, going through it's continuous restart loop. I held the two far corners of the main case with both hands (slightly supporting the sides with my forearms) and gently pulled up with my left hand and pushed down with my right (effectively slightly twisting the whole case), nothing changed, but then I reversed the force and ABRACADABRA, it came back to life, booted normally and is now running fine.

It might have been the other way round (pulled with right first).

I am an electronic engineer and believe the fault must almost certainly be a dry joint somewhere on the motherboard. These can be very hard to find without very careful examination under a microscope such as I use at work. Even then, joints can "look" like they are OK but are actually dry, and only just touching. However, my slight twisting action has obviously made the dry joint touch again. It will probably not last forever and if it gets hot or cold again, the fault may re-appear, but it is working now - My son is playing on it as I type. Treated gently, it might be OK for a while.

At the very least, it is something to try. If it works, it will at least tell you that the machine is not completely dead and could point your local repair man to the nature of the fault.

Good Luck.


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## bhong73

hi guys u r ll talking about acer 7520, and i have exacly the same problem with 7520, alredy clean all dust, removed hard disk, removed video card at a time but still continue the same problem which is on and off problem, i even try to removed the precessor!! but still the same.

Before that my laptop runnning on about 2hrs and suddenly my screen turn color YELLOW and i cant click anything including control alt delete so i HIT the power button for around5 second and it shutdown, i start again and luckyly It start and go to the window as it look like nothing happen, when i open 1 program like My Computer it HANGED! so i need to manualy shutdown it again, i repeated the same proces again i will hanged me again, so i try it on the third time but it not worked anymore the lights came like it was starting, but it promptly shutoff and on, the battery is fine, i just need to removed it to stop the on/off cycle. i started again after 5 hours, computer is cold, already open the back of the computer and clean the dirt and dust in the fan and till doesnt fix it.try to removed hardisk and video card still hasnt fix it...

is this about processor or motherboard? pls help me guys...


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## bhong73

i forgot, my laptop is acer aspire 5520g and having problem with acer 7520 which is on and off, but i will try the battery if it is work.. wish me luck guys


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## chipsnthedip

i have the problem with my HP, if i get the laptop really cold by putting a fan directly on it it will turn on eventually = )


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## Darob

just a thought... ever heard of freezer spray (avail from maplins, RS, Farnell etc ) I've used it many times at work (as electronics tech) unfortunatley, you will need to run your laptop open (difficult I know - but possible with big table and care and some ESD precautions).
the spray is usualy supplied with a tube/straw that can fitted to the nozzel to allow the spray to be aimed. by spraying the motherboard in small areas, try switching on and seeing if the laptop works - thus indicating the area to investigate (the spray causes contractions that may temporarily join any loose/dry joints)
if you find a loose ic leg (or other component) heat it carefully with a soldering iron and see if that works (may need a fine liquid flux)


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## net500cg

I've read all the posts here and have a couple of questions.

1) my Acer 7520 is running Vista Home SP2 .. where does this stack up with the other 'problem computers'? ie, what are they running?

*NOTE:* _After posting this I began looking at the Profile Stickers on the posts and see that the majority of the problems are with Vista installs. That, too is where I'm having the problem. 

I am writing this comment from my Acer Aspire 11.6" w/ XP SP3. It has not exhibited any of the problems seen on the 7520. So, not sure if it's strictly hardware related or exacerbated by the Vista OS. I don't like Vista ... so, it feels 'good' to bust it's electronic balls for the problem. 

Yeah. I know. It's not a logical response, but hey, when did being sick and tired of getting screwed over, ever produce a logical response? :upset: _​
2) my computer does NOT enter the start cycle continuous loop, it just freezes with either a clear color screen (color varies from gray to creme) or in a 'herring bone' style (assume it's made up of the color conglomerate on my desktop image). If I try to start the computer is will begin start-up, get about 5-15 seconds in then shut down. This continues ... well, I've stopped after 10 attempts. Then when left to set for approx. 10 minutes, it will then restart and work - seemingly - fine. Then after a few hours or a few days of working, it will once again crash -n- burn.

3) I have not tried any of the 'keyboard pressure' techniques, yet. Will try the next time it has another 'wintantrum'. 

Interested in hearing any comments on this series of question/comments.

On a few other comments made previous:

1) *'If you're not familiar with soldering a motherboard, don't try it.' * EXCELLENT advice! Motherboard soldering is extremely delicate and the elements on the board are very easily 'roasted' ! Extreme caution to the DIY's here. Xtreme Caution!!

2) *The 'beep' heard by datamoid,* during POST - that 2-Beep sound is a Windows Audio Error 'daily double'. 

Not to be confusingly deciphered with the old IBM Error Beep Code: they do NOT mean the same thing. 

Old IBM Error Beep Code >> HERE

Windoze Error Beep Code >> Look HERE for the list of MS 'beep deciphers'. 

The 2-beep indicates ... well, most likely there was a very short, difficult to hear - single beep shortly BEFORE the 2-beeps. This is a CPU error.

The other most often heard, is the Single SHORT beep, followed by 3 sequential LONG beeps, code ... this indicates System memory error; RAM Stick error.

I hope this has helped and I look forward to any other comments on my questions. This is a most aggravating problem. :sigh:


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## oxcricbury

I got exactly this problem when I tried to boot up my computer this morning. It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO annoying, I've tried all the pushing down on the keyboard stuff and it didn't work. Has anyone figured out why this happens?


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## Ecinue

Oh wow this thread is a life savor I was getting frustrated about replacing the motherboard but pressing where the cmos battery is did the trick for me too. Thank You!


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## oxcricbury

ok this is really weird. I took out our battery, which turned out to be a Li-ion battery. I had my laptop plugged in, and then suddenly it worked! This means that there is some falut with the battery or the connections to it.


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## icesave

Jafo said:


> Hey - I am working on one of these for a friend & it's doing the exact same thing pointed out above. problem is, I have tried the "push the CMOS Battery down" thing but it is not working. I have cleaned out everything (have NOT removed the processor or heat sink yet) & double checked all the connections - still doing the same thing. Any other ideas?


I dit have the same problem.
But not anymore what you do is first take your computer apart.
Take the motherbort remove cpu ram and all plastic tape from it
Use alufoil to protect all plastic (cpu socket ram etc) heat your bakingoven to200 centigrades use som metalpaperclips on the edge so it will not touch metal in the oven leave it in for 8 minuts carfully take it out let it cool down for 60 minuts.
good luck
ps.cpu socket must face upp


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## andresgump

dadamoid said:


> My sons 7520 suddenly started doing the same thing.
> 
> I checked all the RAM and other connections, then tried pressing the keyboard in the middle as suggested by some, to no avail.
> 
> I did notice that there were two (very quiet) POST beeps each time it restarted and tried to find out what they meant but was unsuccesssful so far. Then I thought I would try something.
> 
> The laptop was connected to power and open in front of me, going through it's continuous restart loop. I held the two far corners of the main case with both hands (slightly supporting the sides with my forearms) and gently pulled up with my left hand and pushed down with my right (effectively slightly twisting the whole case), nothing changed, but then I reversed the force and ABRACADABRA, it came back to life, booted normally and is now running fine.
> 
> It might have been the other way round (pulled with right first).
> 
> I am an electronic engineer and believe the fault must almost certainly be a dry joint somewhere on the motherboard. These can be very hard to find without very careful examination under a microscope such as I use at work. Even then, joints can "look" like they are OK but are actually dry, and only just touching. However, my slight twisting action has obviously made the dry joint touch again. It will probably not last forever and if it gets hot or cold again, the fault may re-appear, but it is working now - My son is playing on it as I type. Treated gently, it might be OK for a while.
> 
> At the very least, it is something to try. If it works, it will at least tell you that the machine is not completely dead and could point your local repair man to the nature of the fault.
> 
> Good Luck.


 Hello People, has anyone found were the problem is to make the write fix? Have the same problem, but it wont work pusshing on the keyboard.
Great Forum, registered inmediatly after reading.
Will be back soon.
Thanks in advance. Andres Silva. Argentina.


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## banned

Aspire 7520. After pushing power button system shutdow within 2 sec and repeat starting up.
Problem:?
Fix: 8 min in 220 degrees in the oven, as Icesave told!.

good luck


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## banned

220 degrees Celsius! (Europe)


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## PeteDoss2000

I have been recently handed one of these laptops for repair and I can confirm that the fault that I have here is that upon pressing the power button the firstly the processor fan spins up and after a couple of seconds it stops. The power light goes out and then the cycle continues without the processor fan spinning up, the only way to stop this is by removal of the battery and external power.

I have located the problem and in this particular case it is a design fault. The NVidia GPU is not mounted well and requires removal, reballing and resoldering to the motherboard. This fault is exactly the same as the problem that was experienced with the XBox 360 and is a genuine manufacturing flaw. 

The oven trick may work but please dont actually put the whole laptop in the oven, you may end up with quite a mess, totally strip down the laptop and only put the motherboard in the oven. Personally I would not recommend this technique as you may end up causing irrepairable damage to something that could be repaired in a very sensible and more relyable way. 

This afternoon I am going to attempt to get Acer to resolve this issue as I can see that there are many forums concerning faults with this model of acer laptop that uses the NVidia GPU.


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## Merlintrenton

Hi Petedoss2000,

Thanks for the update on this - looks like you have found the latent defect. Shame ACER do not appear to acknowledge this exists. 

Please let us know how you get on - unfortunately I have three of these laptops (yes fell into the trap of buying a job lot when on offer a couple of years ago). All of which have this same fault - contacted ACER (the repair agent in the UK?) a while ago and they just did not want to know. EXTREMELY poor Customer Service. 
I will never buy ACER again, but would be nice to at least get these repaired and back up and running if at all possible.


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## Chaserlarsdk

Hello..

Is it possible to manually solder the connection points on the GPU.

I have tried to put pressure on the middle of the keybord and all the other things you wrote. But nothing is helping..

I have ordered a new CPU to replace the old one.

Are you 100% sure that is it the GPU making the problem??

From Lars, Denmark


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## PeteDoss2000

Hi Lars,

I have repaired the one I was given to repair and I can confirm that it works perfectly since re-soldering the GPU.

It has been known that you can re-solder a BGA using a heat gun although I myself have never tried this method. 

I would certainly give it a go if you have one I will post a link on the forum later with some details on how other people have done this.

Regards

Pete


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## Chaserlarsdk

I'm 5 minutes away from dropping the motherboard in the oven..

But what about the components sitting on the bottom side. Will they not drop off when it all is heatened up.


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## Chaserlarsdk

Now the laptop have been baked for 8 minutes.
And I have assembled it again.
I pressed the turn on buttom and,

IT WORKS.... Awesome...

Thank you all a lot... 

My only problem is that the bios battery died in the oven. I have soldered it out from the motherboard. 
Is it a good idea to get a new one or can I leave it without one..

Should the problem now be gone for ever. Or have some of you experienced that it will come back??

From Lars


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## PeteDoss2000

Hi Lars,

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Glad the oven trick worked for you. Yes batteries don't like getting that hot.

I would not like to say how long it will last to be honest you may be lucky and never have the problem again.

Pete.


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## crigon

PeteDoss2000 said:


> Hi Lars,
> 
> Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Glad the oven trick worked for you. Yes batteries don't like getting that hot.
> 
> I would not like to say how long it will last to be honest you may be lucky and never have the problem again.
> 
> Pete.


I PteteDoss2000, could you post an image where we can find exactly hte GPU proble that need to be resoldered?


Only replacing cmos battery could I resolve?

thanks and happy new year!!!

Cris


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## PeteDoss2000

Hi Cris,

Sure I will post a couple of pictures on Monday of the GPU location but as of where to solder that will be rather difficult as the device is a Ball Grid Array (BGA) meaning all the solder connections to the PCB are 100% under the device concerned which either needs specialist equipment like a hot-air rework station and a re-balling kit. 
Or a lot of guts with a hot air gun or the oven technique.

Pete


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## crigon

PeteDoss2000 said:


> Hi Cris,
> 
> Sure I will post a couple of pictures on Monday of the GPU location but as of where to solder that will be rather difficult as the device is a Ball Grid Array (BGA) meaning all the solder connections to the PCB are 100% under the device concerned which either needs specialist equipment like a hot-air rework station and a re-balling kit.
> Or a lot of guts with a hot air gun or the oven technique.
> 
> Pete


Hi Pete, 
Il''show the pictures to a friend that work around this thing, I'm not able to make a good job!

thank a lot!!
Cris


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## Merlintrenton

Hi PeteDoss2000,

Did you ever get a response from ACER on this? As mentioned previously I have three of these Laptops all with rhe same fault - but not sure of which board etc if was to follow the Oven solution.

Thanks


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## JANNIKO

Hi to you all. I had a similar problem. Yesterday my Acer Aspire 7520 suddenly begun to show black screen, no POST, no beep at startup. I tried to: plug/unplug charger, press 60 seconds the startup botton, remove/reseat memory, remove/reseat, remove/reseat graphic card. It seems strange to me that the problem is the graphic card, like most of you, simply because the computer STILL IS NOT RUNNING ONCE THE GRAPHIC CARD HAS BEEN REMOVED, and it does not "BEEP" at all! SO *** is in your opinion? 
The motherboard?


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## Chaserlarsdk

How is it possible for you to remove the graphic card??


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## JANNIKO

Hi man, first of all: thank you for answering. I'm becoming fool on this.

Well, the aspire 7520 has two graphic devices: on is integrated on the mainboard and shares RAM memory (chipset MCP67MV), the other one is a stand-alone GeForce that could be 8400, 8600 or 9300 depending on the specific sub-model of aspire 7520. 

The GeForce is a stand-alone MXM type II card, which can be removed.
If you want to know how, you can take easily a look at Acer 7520G MXM upgrade . 

So: I am right now in a bare bone set up. PSU, mobo, fan, CPU and NVIDIA MCP67MV chipset (which are both integrated). 

The notebook does power on, but: NO POST, NO BEEP (even without RAM: I am in a barebone setup), NO BIOS at all. 

I'm running short of ideas. Capacitors are fine. The fans run and the heatsink of GPU-CPU road get not that hot. There is no dust inside. Dust was owning the notebook until I removed it few days ago. It worked after that like a charm and then.. dead.


Any ideas? I am 5 minutes far away from getting it into an oven :upset:


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## NeoRomeo

Hey everyone

I 'm facing this very problem for almost 4 months. The story is the same evey time. I take my laptop in my bag and use it and when I return to the office it will need all kinds of stupid sequences to make it restart. It started becoming really annoying today, so I will need your experience on those things:

1) Could it be that my office is freezing because of the open window that allows smoke from cigarette to exit?

2)Humidity is not the favourite condition of all those electronics, so is it possible that it is humidity that creates this problem? 

3) When the problem first appeared I tried removing the battery and starting up with just adaptor. It worked fine and I tried not to move the laptop to avoid the problem. Probably getting the battery out and in was just like exerrting the pressure in the center of the case...

4) Today I got desperate. It got me an almost blank screen with an undescore flashing but no keyboard would work. I disabled Quiet boot to check the memory test results. Memtest was fine, though there was a list of problems that I couldn't freeze the screen to see them (too fast). After several restarts I managed to read somethng about a *PCI conflict.* 

5) Sometimes it restarts, sometimes it doesn't. Usually it doesn't restart. 

6) After about 45 minutes of blank screen on battery (I was on the phone), I tried to restart and not only it restarted, but it resumed Windows. Could it be some sort of problem of Windows? When I close the lid it hibernates and till today the problem appeared only when I terminated the laptop properly. Today it appeared after hibernation, so things are getting pretty wild...

Any suggestions on what those symptoms may refer, or even confirming the symptoms would get us close to the boot mystery.

Thanks in advance


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## sonie

Thank you very much PeteDoss2000 for pointing us that GPU is the one causing that trouble. You are right, I did it for Aspire 4520G, but not that oven thing. I used only 500 watts hair blower because I don't have that heat gun. I used also an aluminum foil to cover the other components of the motherboard to protect them from the heat leaving only that GPU open. Heating for about 10 to 15 minutes, reassemble after cool down. My laptop came back into life again. I just hope that it will last longer.

thanks, 

Sonie from Philippines


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## MexyMA

Thank You,guys (IceSave,Banned..)
This thing with the oven works.200-220 centigrades for 8 min.GREAT.
I buy this ACER 7520 three years ago.Eight months ago i have this problem on&off.I buy another one Aspire 8530G and forget the old one.Yesterday i read this forum and i tried -SUCCESSFUL- thank you for all.


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## gpap10

I have the same problem with my acer 7520g. But I cannot find the cmos battery ? Can i easile remove the keyboard ? Help


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