Dear colleagues,
I'm facing difficulties in finding the problem on this mainboard, I ask you gently for help.
The owner told me that there have been no drops, no water/liquid spilling, no bios/updates interrupting but suddenly, from an evening to a morning, it did start anymore.
I have inspected the entire board with a 20x magnifying glass and found no evidence of corrosion, liquid spillings or burned components, not even a sign of drop.
The board reacts to power button, side blue power led lights up when power button is pressed, fan makes 3 second rotation to normal speed then stops, and then all remains like this for un indefinite amount of time...I waited also 30 minutes but anything happened, i.e. no image on the display.
Tried on external display, even disconnecting internal video cable, but no video also from the hdmi port.
CPU heatsup proportionally to the time which is on, but the fan doesn't starts to cool it down.
If I take off the heatspreader, after some minutes the board shutsdown for overtemperature.
This board is a 2A revision, it has no onboard RAM by design (and RAM_IDx are soldered accordingly), so I can't disable them.
Around 2 seconds after the power up, you can see a kind of "blackening" of the display panel (as some kind of polarization), but that's it, it even does it without RAM bank.
Of course I've already tried other RAM banks, but the same one come with the laptop is correctly working in other laptop, so it shouldn't be the problem.
I've tried reprogramming the BIOS:
- 1st time, I only cleaned ME part, leaving the BIOS region intact, but didn't solve the problem
- 2nd time I cleaned ME part and took the same BIOS revision (1.20) from Acer website, transferring serial numbers, but no changes
- 3rd time I put the last 2.03 version of BIOS which has a cleaned ME part directly from Acer website, again transferring serial numbers, but no joy...
- 4th time, I wrote the same bios file of #3 but put it into a Winbond W25Q64FVSIQ (original is an XMC XM25QH64AHIG) but no solution.
I even tried the Crisis recovery thing, putting the correct filename (C5V01X64.FD) in a usb FAT32 drive, pressing Fn+Esc and power button makes the fan go to the max but the system doesn't even try to access the usb pen (no blinks of the power led on the usb).
I made many measurements of impedances and voltages, and I found no shorts anywere, and basing on the power sequence found in the schematic, I have these numbers:
+RTCVCC 2.95
SOC_RTCRST# 2.94
EC_RST# 3.21
+19VB 18.84
+3VLP 3.22
EC_ON PR413 3.21 - 3.22 5V_EN
+1.8VALW_PRIM 0.00 1.77 (not in S5)
+1.8VALW_PG 0.00 3.22 (not in S5)
+VCCPRIM_CORE/+1.0VALW_PRIM 0.00 0.97 (not in S5)
EC_RSMRST# 0.00 3.18 (not in S5)
ON/OFF 3.18 goes to zero
PBTN_OUT# 3.21 goes to zero delayed
PM_SLP_S5# 3.26
ESPI_RST# pulse then 0.00 ***
PM_SLP_S4# 3.26
SYSON 3.20
+1.0V_VCCSTU 0.98
+1.2V_VDDQ 1.19
PM_SLP_S3# 3.26
SUSP# 3.22
+1.0VS_VCCSTG 0.97 -> RC3 H_PROCHOT# 0.04 ***
+VCCIO 0.97
+5VS/+3VS/+1.8VS/+1.5VS 5.09/3.26/1.77/ NO +1.5VS
EC_VCCST_PG 0.97
VR_ON 3.22
VR_HOT# 0.04 RB20 H_PROCHOT# SW_PROCHOT# ***
SM_PG_CTRL 3.22
+0.6VS_VTT 0.59 PJ502
+VCC_SA 1.02
VR_PWRGD 3.25
PCH_PWROK (SYS_PWROK) 3.18 RC122 NA by design SYS_PWROK 0.00
SUSPWRDNACK 0.00
H_CPUPWRGD 0.97
PLT_RST# 3.26
+VCC_CORE / +VCC_GT 0.84
Measured with asteriscs are suspect to not be correct...but honestly I don't know if H_PROCHOT# should come up before CPU starts eating data.
I found also that DDR_DRAMRST# is blocked to 0.04v, that makes me suspect the CPU is holding it from start, but...why?
I have a suspect that under the CPU there maybe some corrupted balls that don't make a complete communication with RAM bank, but even heating up the CPU package with hot air didn't sort anything out...
Basing on other threads read on this forum, I measured also:
104 MAINPWON 534 3.21 (s5)
107 3V_EN_R 611 3.22 (s3)
They mean that signals output correctly to start the respective voltage sections, but...still board doesn't start completely.
PL906 is the only big inductor that doesn't output any tension, not even a spike during startup, but I think it's ok because the board has a discrete GPU then the hybrid graphics could start in a secondary moment.
When the system has "started", if the battery is connected and chargin, if you take away the power plug, the speakers squeak to inform you that the power has been detached or attached.
Please, what can you suggest to measure or change?
I'm facing difficulties in finding the problem on this mainboard, I ask you gently for help.
The owner told me that there have been no drops, no water/liquid spilling, no bios/updates interrupting but suddenly, from an evening to a morning, it did start anymore.
I have inspected the entire board with a 20x magnifying glass and found no evidence of corrosion, liquid spillings or burned components, not even a sign of drop.
The board reacts to power button, side blue power led lights up when power button is pressed, fan makes 3 second rotation to normal speed then stops, and then all remains like this for un indefinite amount of time...I waited also 30 minutes but anything happened, i.e. no image on the display.
Tried on external display, even disconnecting internal video cable, but no video also from the hdmi port.
CPU heatsup proportionally to the time which is on, but the fan doesn't starts to cool it down.
If I take off the heatspreader, after some minutes the board shutsdown for overtemperature.
This board is a 2A revision, it has no onboard RAM by design (and RAM_IDx are soldered accordingly), so I can't disable them.
Around 2 seconds after the power up, you can see a kind of "blackening" of the display panel (as some kind of polarization), but that's it, it even does it without RAM bank.
Of course I've already tried other RAM banks, but the same one come with the laptop is correctly working in other laptop, so it shouldn't be the problem.
I've tried reprogramming the BIOS:
- 1st time, I only cleaned ME part, leaving the BIOS region intact, but didn't solve the problem
- 2nd time I cleaned ME part and took the same BIOS revision (1.20) from Acer website, transferring serial numbers, but no changes
- 3rd time I put the last 2.03 version of BIOS which has a cleaned ME part directly from Acer website, again transferring serial numbers, but no joy...
- 4th time, I wrote the same bios file of #3 but put it into a Winbond W25Q64FVSIQ (original is an XMC XM25QH64AHIG) but no solution.
I even tried the Crisis recovery thing, putting the correct filename (C5V01X64.FD) in a usb FAT32 drive, pressing Fn+Esc and power button makes the fan go to the max but the system doesn't even try to access the usb pen (no blinks of the power led on the usb).
I made many measurements of impedances and voltages, and I found no shorts anywere, and basing on the power sequence found in the schematic, I have these numbers:
+RTCVCC 2.95
SOC_RTCRST# 2.94
EC_RST# 3.21
+19VB 18.84
+3VLP 3.22
EC_ON PR413 3.21 - 3.22 5V_EN
+1.8VALW_PRIM 0.00 1.77 (not in S5)
+1.8VALW_PG 0.00 3.22 (not in S5)
+VCCPRIM_CORE/+1.0VALW_PRIM 0.00 0.97 (not in S5)
EC_RSMRST# 0.00 3.18 (not in S5)
ON/OFF 3.18 goes to zero
PBTN_OUT# 3.21 goes to zero delayed
PM_SLP_S5# 3.26
ESPI_RST# pulse then 0.00 ***
PM_SLP_S4# 3.26
SYSON 3.20
+1.0V_VCCSTU 0.98
+1.2V_VDDQ 1.19
PM_SLP_S3# 3.26
SUSP# 3.22
+1.0VS_VCCSTG 0.97 -> RC3 H_PROCHOT# 0.04 ***
+VCCIO 0.97
+5VS/+3VS/+1.8VS/+1.5VS 5.09/3.26/1.77/ NO +1.5VS
EC_VCCST_PG 0.97
VR_ON 3.22
VR_HOT# 0.04 RB20 H_PROCHOT# SW_PROCHOT# ***
SM_PG_CTRL 3.22
+0.6VS_VTT 0.59 PJ502
+VCC_SA 1.02
VR_PWRGD 3.25
PCH_PWROK (SYS_PWROK) 3.18 RC122 NA by design SYS_PWROK 0.00
SUSPWRDNACK 0.00
H_CPUPWRGD 0.97
PLT_RST# 3.26
+VCC_CORE / +VCC_GT 0.84
Measured with asteriscs are suspect to not be correct...but honestly I don't know if H_PROCHOT# should come up before CPU starts eating data.
I found also that DDR_DRAMRST# is blocked to 0.04v, that makes me suspect the CPU is holding it from start, but...why?
I have a suspect that under the CPU there maybe some corrupted balls that don't make a complete communication with RAM bank, but even heating up the CPU package with hot air didn't sort anything out...
Basing on other threads read on this forum, I measured also:
104 MAINPWON 534 3.21 (s5)
107 3V_EN_R 611 3.22 (s3)
They mean that signals output correctly to start the respective voltage sections, but...still board doesn't start completely.
PL906 is the only big inductor that doesn't output any tension, not even a spike during startup, but I think it's ok because the board has a discrete GPU then the hybrid graphics could start in a secondary moment.
When the system has "started", if the battery is connected and chargin, if you take away the power plug, the speakers squeak to inform you that the power has been detached or attached.
Please, what can you suggest to measure or change?
