Recently I bought a dead Acer 340t Travelmate laptop.
Hmmmm.
Why'd you do that?
Powering it up,
I would see hard drive activity for approximately 2-3 seconds, then
nothing.
It seems you have omitted a few details on exactly what's
going on. What else do or don't you see from the moment of
power on till (nothing more)? For example, you see a post
screen or vendor logo, screen output? Can you enter bios?
More info might help.
Have you been using the AC power or battery? Have you
confirmed that either is in good working order? FOr
example, LED indicators for battery level or voltage
readings with a multimeter?
I had the BIOS reflashed and I could boot the machine when it
was returned to me.
If the system boots even one single time after the bios
flash, the bios is ok. That is, it "was" OK... if for
whatever reason, the system keeps losing the bios, there's
no reason to believe flashing yet again would resolve this,
it'd most likely just lose it again.
But then, gradually, I would get fewer and fewer
good boots, and the original symptoms returned. Now it's the same as
before, with no LCD or hard drive activity, although I can hear the
drive spinning.
Have you checked the battery?
Do you have the manual or service manual (can you get them
if not?), does it detail the bios EEPROM, particularly
whether it's socketed or not?
Does anyone know what this behavior suggests? A failing motherboard
component?
Could be, or the power board, or memory is loose, or board
or connections are bad... tons of things can go wrong on a
notebook, particularly new/different things from
abuse/shock.
Also, could this be the result of flashing the BIOS with
the wrong utility?
No, because the bios was necessarily ok to get it to boot
that first (and any subsequent successful) time(s).
I've checked everything except individual mobo
components, something that's beyond my level of expertise.
We still don't know exactly what it's doing... from the
brief description you gave it could simply be the hard drive
that is failing. Have you any other potential boot devices
and have you tried booting from them to (anything, any OS at
all) ?
More importantly, does anyone know of a way to reflash the BIOS without
actually getting the machine to boot? Excuse me if that's a ridiculous
question in itself. Suggestions are appreciated.
If it's a socketed EEPROM you simply remove it and swap in
another chip, or reflash that one. There are services you
can google, though if it's soldered on it's practically not
a realistic goal to remove & replace it, especially because
of what I previously wrote, that the bios must've been
intact at some point.
Otherwise, see if the fans freely turn, perhaps they failed
and the system overheated long-term and is heat damaged.
I have no idea what that notebook is like, perhaps a CPU fan
too? I doubt CPU is damaged, but if it got hot enough and
there was a heat spreader that has detached from the core,
it might then overheat rather quickly. It's not a common
problem but better to leave no stone unturned.
If you are able, take a multimeter and get voltage readings
of the power board, or the power regulation circuit on the
motherboard. Try disconnecting any unnecessary drives.
I've already written too much, we need a better idea of
exactly what it is and isn't doing, where it stops in the
whole boot process. TYpically a system goes through:
video bios display- very quick
mainboard bios display;
ID
Device enumeration
Drive enumeration
Boot order tried, each device in turn
