Weird boot problem when running acer notebook on battery

[martin waldmeier]

Hi,

I own an Acer Aspire 2010 notebook with a Hitachi 80 GB drive,
formatted in NTFS (Running Windows XP).

When I attempt to start my notebook while running on batteries, I
occasionally (But not always) get the error message "Boot sector
invalid".

The drive is recognized correctly by the bios, though. After the error
has occurred, and I subsequently try to reboot the computer, the error
message stays the same. It will disappear only if I mount the drive
into my desktop PC (But not as boot device) and during boot, scandisk
then checks the drive successfully, all the data is still fine and no
problems are found. I remove the drive again and put it into my
notebook and it will run again fine, as long as it is connected with
the AC adapter.

When I remove the AC adapter again or no external power is available it
will usually boot fine once, but on the second or third boot the error
message will come again and after that there's no possibility to get it
running anymore other than to connect it to my desktop PC first.

By the way, the battery itself is fine; I rarely used it until recently
and when I used it I didn't have any obvious problems with it.

Any ideas? Thank you,
Martin Waldmeier

 

[kony]

Hi,

I own an Acer Aspire 2010 notebook with a Hitachi 80 GB drive,
formatted in NTFS (Running Windows XP).

When I attempt to start my notebook while running on batteries, I
occasionally (But not always) get the error message "Boot sector
invalid".

The drive is recognized correctly by the bios, though. After the error
has occurred, and I subsequently try to reboot the computer, the error
message stays the same. It will disappear only if I mount the drive
into my desktop PC (But not as boot device) and during boot, scandisk
then checks the drive successfully, all the data is still fine and no
problems are found. I remove the drive again and put it into my
notebook and it will run again fine, as long as it is connected with
the AC adapter.

When I remove the AC adapter again or no external power is available it
will usually boot fine once, but on the second or third boot the error
message will come again and after that there's no possibility to get it
running anymore other than to connect it to my desktop PC first.

By the way, the battery itself is fine; I rarely used it until recently
and when I used it I didn't have any obvious problems with it.

I don't know the age of the system but battery packs degrade
over time whether you use them or not... just not as
quickly. It could be that now you do have "obvious
problems".

Does the (presuming there is one) battery power indicator,
whether on battery or notebook feedback, indicate battery
level is good?

If the battery itself is fine then it might be the contacts
are dirty, or the power board itself which might be a
separate board or integral to the mainboard. You might
disassemble the notebook and probe around with a multimeter
to take voltage readings if you're inclined to (as well as
battery voltage reading), or take it to a shop if not...
this is presuming you feel comfortable ruling out the
battery, and have tried using it continously on AC power for
long enough (including power-off and reboot cycles) to be
sure it only occurs due to running off battery.

If the notebook has been suject to rough handling or
environment you might also check all contacts, connectors,
etc, the mechanical connections visiable with notebook
partially disassembled.

 

[martin waldmeier]

The system is about a little more than one year old.

Because I mostly use the system on AC power, the battery is mostly
fully charged, however if I unplug AC power (While it is already
running) the battery usually lasts about 4 hours, which is still very
good. The power indicator also displays the appropriate values. So
mostly when the hard disk problem occurs, the battery has been fully
charged before.

I have also tried about 50 power-off and reboot cycles on AC power and
the problem hasn't occurred once. On battery power though, as said
before, it has always appeared within the first 3 attempts to boot. By
the way, after the error has occured, I usually try 10 or 20 reboot
cycles to see if anything happens, and sometimes I am able to "revive"
the system by shaking the case a little bit. Also sometimes, even
though it does boot on battery power, after some hours it suddenly
crashes and performs a reboot instantly, whereupon the boot error
occurs.

I have tried to disassemble the notebook to check contacts and
connectors inside but I couldn't manage to open it yet... Seems quite
tricky...

 

[Pen]

The system is about a little more than one year old.

Because I mostly use the system on AC power, the battery
is mostly
fully charged, however if I unplug AC power (While it is
already
running) the battery usually lasts about 4 hours, which is
still very
good. The power indicator also displays the appropriate
values. So
mostly when the hard disk problem occurs, the battery has
been fully
charged before.

I have also tried about 50 power-off and reboot cycles on
AC power and
the problem hasn't occurred once. On battery power though,
as said
before, it has always appeared within the first 3 attempts
to boot. By
the way, after the error has occured, I usually try 10 or
20 reboot
cycles to see if anything happens, and sometimes I am able
to "revive"
the system by shaking the case a little bit. Also
sometimes, even
though it does boot on battery power, after some hours it
suddenly
crashes and performs a reboot instantly, whereupon the
boot error
occurs.

I have tried to disassemble the notebook to check contacts
and
connectors inside but I couldn't manage to open it yet...
Seems quite
tricky...

There is an Acer group, which might help
you with opening the notebook.

alt.sys.pc-clone.acer also alt.pc-clone.acer
is a possible one.

 

[Noozer]

Hi,

I own an Acer Aspire 2010 notebook with a Hitachi 80 GB drive,
formatted in NTFS (Running Windows XP).

When I attempt to start my notebook while running on batteries, I
occasionally (But not always) get the error message "Boot sector
invalid".

Not sure if this will be helpful...

Try booting to a DOS diskette while on battery for 10+ times. If you're
having a hardware problem, you should not be able to boot from the hard
drive after this. If it's software, you should still be able to boot the
hard drive at least once more.

In Win XP, go to the drive in the Device Manager and see if there is a
setting to "optimize for quick remove" and choose it. Also, if there is a
checkbox for "Enable write caching", uncheck it.

It sounds like the laptop is shutting off too fast, not letting XP finish
flushing the cache, etc.

 

[martin waldmeier]

It sounds like the laptop is shutting off too fast, not letting XP finish

flushing the cache, etc

Disabled cached writing now and it seems like the problem is gone - I
performed about 30 reboot cycles on battery and the problem hasn't
occurred.
Maybe the problem is solved - THANKS!

But what might be the reason why the laptop is shutting off too fast
before it has written the cache to the disk?

 

[martin waldmeier]

It sounds like the laptop is shutting off too fast, not letting XP finish

flushing the cache, etc

Disabled cached writing now and it seems like the problem is gone - I
performed about 30 reboot cycles on battery and the problem hasn't
occurred.
Maybe the problem is solved - THANKS!

But what might be the reason why the laptop is shutting off too fast
before it has written the cache to the disk?

 

[kony]

Disabled cached writing now and it seems like the problem is gone - I
performed about 30 reboot cycles on battery and the problem hasn't
occurred.
Maybe the problem is solved - THANKS!

But what might be the reason why the laptop is shutting off too fast
before it has written the cache to the disk?

That's not really a solution, it just makes it less likely
there's data waiting to be written when the failure happens,
thus making recovery from the still-present failure, easier.

While there have been past types of PC issues where systems
shut down too fast to flush a cache, that's not your lone
problem as revealed by two details:

1) " Also sometimes, even though it does boot on battery
power, after some hours it suddenly crashes and performs a
reboot instantly,"

2) Problem only occurs on battery power. AC powered system
would shut down equally fast.

 

[martin waldmeier]

OK seems like the problem isn't solved at all. After a series of 50+
reboot cycles over the last two days I was confident that I had found
some workaround for the problem even though the actual problem
obviously wasn't proberly solved... But now I just came back from work
(Left my AC adapter there of course) and what happens: "Hard disk
invalid boot sector - Press H to retry".

Maybe I or somebody else really should check the connectors inside.
Maybe there is a loose connection or something. But this would still
not explain why this only happens on battery power...

 

[kony]

OK seems like the problem isn't solved at all. After a series of 50+
reboot cycles over the last two days I was confident that I had found
some workaround for the problem even though the actual problem
obviously wasn't proberly solved... But now I just came back from work
(Left my AC adapter there of course) and what happens: "Hard disk
invalid boot sector - Press H to retry".

Maybe I or somebody else really should check the connectors inside.
Maybe there is a loose connection or something. But this would still
not explain why this only happens on battery power...

It would if the connection is at a point where the wiring is
unique to the battery supply or the DC input, or it could be
a component on the power subcircuits that is unique to the
battery supply portion. Is your battery voltage (battery
spec) the same as the DC input?

 

[martin waldmeier]

The battery voltage is 14.3V (4.3A) compared to 19V (3.42A) on the AC
adapter.