Acer Aspire x1200 Power Cycling Problem?

Kridian

Distinguished
Feb 27, 2005
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Hi. I'm trying to troubleshoot a friend's Acer Aspire x1200 that keeps cycling its power and won't come on. Has anyone experienced such a thing?

    I have replaced the PSU and the Motherboard.
    Tried testing the hard drive in another computer and it works flawlessly.
    Tried to turn it on with one stick of ram only. (has two 1gb sticks of DDR2 667/800)
    Tried it with a different ram vendor.
    Tried putting a cardboard shim in between the motherboard and the chassis because I thought it was shorting somewhere. No joy.
    Reset the jumper on the BIOS and Battery.
    Tried new SATA cables on the HD & DVD drive.


I'm at a complete dead end with this damn thing. Any ideas & tips would be much appreciated.

Things left to try:
Another processor
A discreet GPU in the PCIe slot

Pictures for what it's worth:
x1200_mobo_layout_from_manual.jpg

Acer_Aspire_x1200_inside_pic.jpg
 
Solution
Posting this for any other peeps that have similar issues with the Acer Aspire x1200.

After just about giving up on this repair job for the Acer Aspire x1200, I decided to check one last thing. I unplugged the 4-pin 12v connector from the motherboard and tried to see if the larger 24-pin would power things on. And yes it did. The CPU, DVD drive and the HD seemed to stay on but of course, no BIOS screen.

The 4-pin connector gives power to the CPU so the writing was on the wall... new processor. After a new CPU (AMD Athlon 64bit X2), this thing fired right up!

I've read somewhere that the video cards that come with these units can also cause this behavior so there are the two options to try.

Posting this for any other peeps that have similar issues with the Acer Aspire x1200.

After just about giving up on this repair job for the Acer Aspire x1200, I decided to check one last thing. I unplugged the 4-pin 12v connector from the motherboard and tried to see if the larger 24-pin would power things on. And yes it did. The CPU, DVD drive and the HD seemed to stay on but of course, no BIOS screen.

The 4-pin connector gives power to the CPU so the writing was on the wall... new processor. After a new CPU (AMD Athlon 64bit X2), this thing fired right up!

I've read somewhere that the video cards that come with these units can also cause this behavior so there are the two options to try.

 
Solution