Laptop Acer Travelmate 4050 takes over 10 Mins to POST

Question

I am a computer tech and have received a laptop for repair. I noticed when I turned it on the laptop would not do anything for a min or two (the fan would run up and stop, power led would shine and some cd rom activity then stop). It would sit there with a black screen. Suddenly after a random number of minutes (between 1-20mins!) the Acer BIOS screen would display and POST would happen before booting into Windows XP.

It has frozen in XP at various times and pointed towards a CPU fault and over heating. The fan was on its last legs, sounded like a car engine, so I replaced this. Still same issues.

I next replaced the CPU like for like. Same problems. Also applied new thermal paste between the cpu and heatsink, when running the fan kicks in occasionally (not as often as I thought it would) and I left it playing mp3, online radio and updating to service pack 3 and it wouldnt freeze. shutting down ok, cold start, not ok. Waits again before showing the BIOS screen.

The hard disk was also making a screaming noise (SMART test and chkdsk passed) but I also replaced this.

The laptop powers up with and without the battery so dont think its a battery issue.

Running out of ideas and wondered if anyone had any advice.

Answer 1

Definitely run the hardware diagnostics that should have come with it. If they have not, get a Hiren's or some similar tool and use the diagnostics to scan your RAM, CPU, and MB. Also, if you can, flash the BIOS. Once you have done those if you are still having the issue... I'd probably start trying RAM chips one at a time and in different slots to see if that has any effect and from there if that still does not catch it... I'd attempt to try posting with the Hard Disks unconnected (again using a Hiren's or some other bootable CD).

Post your results if none of these fix you up and I'll be happy to lend what help I can as you go.