Acer E1-570G | Z5WE1 LA-9535P

[fezmonki]

Hi everyone. I'm trying to step up my repair game from replacing bits to logic board repairs, and have my first patient.

Issue: Laptop turns on, steady power led, orange battery led, blinking HD led.

After research, it seems this laptop frequently has BIOS issues. So I:
1. Purchased a CH341A eeprom programmer with clip.
2. Read the bios multiple times.
3. MD5 hashed them, they all came out different.
4. Wrote the correct bios anyway.
5. Laptop now still shows power led, but no HD activity. It will still engage in BIOS recovery mode with the keyboard combination.
6. Purchased a new BIOS chip off ebay.
7. Wrote the BIOS on this one, and swapped it in, no change.

Now, after watching a bunch of videos on youtube, I went hunting for shorts on the motherboard lol. I did find a whole bunch of shorted caps, all the circled ones (and probably more I forgot between taking the picture and getting to the computer):



Does anyone have any ideas of where to start or do I just start desoldering caps till the short is gone?

Confession time: Between steps 5 and 6, I removed the screen cable after removing the power connector but forgot the battery in and saw a tiny spark. Unsure if related.

I inspected the whole board under a lens and can't find any physical evidence of damage.

Thank you.

[piernov]

Re: Acer E1-570G | Z5WE1 LA-9535P

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=88758

When requesting help, please attach a picture of the board with voltage and resistance to ground measurements on all the large inductors after triggering power button.

2.2. Don't suspect that something is shorted with no reason
Shorted components are not the only failure mode of a laptop. Additionally, some places will measure low resistance to ground under normal operation. In general, high power low voltage (<2V) power rails will measure less than a few hundred ohms to ground. CPU VCore will measure a few ohms only. GPU VCore with newer NVidia GPU can even measure less than 1 ohm. It's normal. If you suspect a short to ground, always report your exact resistance to ground measurements.

[fezmonki]

Re: Acer E1-570G | Z5WE1 LA-9535P

Thank you, I followed your thread.

1. The board is currently not POSTing, ram has been reseated, changed, cleaned.
2. CPU Voltage was measured at 1.12v.

I'd like to add the situation has gotten worse since reflashing the bios and changing the chip. It used to show activity on the USB port and attempt BIOS recovery via FN + ESC (fan sped up and USB key flashing a sequence), but ever since reflashing the first time, it only lights up the power LED and nothing happens.

That should indicate there's an issue with the BIOS, but I tried both brand new Winbond 25Q64FVSIQ (same as the one originally on the board) and Winbond 25Q64FVSIG (what I found people selling as a replacement on ebay) chips, flashed multiple times with 1.0 BIOS I found on some forum, and 2.06 off Acers website but nothing. Motherboard shows the BIOS chip is getting its 3.3 volts, and if I start the motherboard without the BIOS chip, it complains by continuously shutting on and off.

I'm unsure where to go from here.