DEAD Acer laptop battery fixed | You will NOT GUESS what the issue was!
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- čas přidán 30. 07. 2024
- One of my laptops had no battery time whatsoever - at all. it would turn off the moment the power connector was plugged out, even though OS reported full charge. Sounds like the battery is completely dead - or is it? The real problem turned out to be quite different from what I originally thought. I bet your guess would be wrong, too ;) Check out to find out what it was!
So this time around the subject is Acer ES1-531 laptop, though this issue is applicable to wide variety of Acer laptops, and probably some of the other manufacturers as well. In this video we'll open up the laptop, take the LiPo battery out, tear down the packaging to poke around inside the battery pack (DANGER WILL ROBINSON!) We'll find out what the issue really is, fix it, reassemble everything back and test the end result. Perhaps explode something, I don't know ;) This and a lot more you can find in this video (use the chapters if you want to jump to a specific section)!
If you're working with LiPo batteries, be very careful and make sure you're doing it as safely as you can. There is a mandatory disclaimer that these batteries are potentially dangerous - they can release toxic fumes, ignite or even explode. So don't do it unless you're certain that you can handle scenarios like that. You have been warned.
Extended worklog version is on the sibling JMI Works channel:
• [JMI wLog] DEAD Acer l...
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you found this useful and would like to see more. Let me know in the comments what you agree/disagree with, what you liked, what you didn't like, if you have any questions, if you know of a better way of doing it, or if there is something that I absolutely should not be doing or have done ;) All constructive feedback is welcome! ;)
Disclaimer:
This video is only for entertainment purposes. Any injury, damage, or loss that may result from improper use of tools, equipment, or from the information in this video is the sole responsibility of the viewer.
00:00 Intro
00:28 Problem: battery doesn't work without AC power
01:20 Initial battery state
01:59 The plan
02:40 Open up the case
05:00 Remove the battery!
06:02 Battery inspection
06:37 Initial voltage measurement on battery connector
08:13 Ideas on how to charge the pack externally
10:09 Unwrap the battery pack
11:58 Look inside the battery pack
14:02 Figure out polarity of the cells
14:55 Check voltage of individual cells
16:50 No output from the pack with all good cells? WTF?!
19:15 Eureka! This is NOT what I thought the problem was!..
20:57 Battery connector pinout
22:51 Open case switch is the culprit!
27:34 Rebuild the battery pack
29:43 Reinstall the battery
30:22 Open case microswitch fix
31:07 Reassemble laptop
35:28 Final test
33:33 Success - thanks for watching! - Věda a technologie
After all the videos I've looked at. This was it all along. Thanks!
Glad I could help. I definitely did not expect that something like that could be a problem...
Thanks for your efforts here. Appreciated.
Glad it was useful!
Interesting. I have never seen the microswitch disconnect before. Great video. Thanks
Thanks! I knew I wouldn't be the only one surprised by what I found ;)
Thank you so much! It really helped!!❤❤❤❤
You're welcome!
Same thing, the battery type AC14B8K was stuck at 80% on an Acer model (Acer A515-41G) it has a switch for the bottom case to press it, so the battery will be working just fine after full reassembled laptop. The switch is near the RAM memory and is marked as DIP SWG1. The switch will be pressed by the RAM door access cover.
A whole bunch of Acer laptops is likely to have this feature. I am curious, if any other manufacturers do something like this.
With other brands I didn’t encountered this thing but this Acer stayed for like 2 days on the bench only for me to figure out what is wrong with the battery 🤦🏻♂️ and when I wanted to give it back to the client with the status of dead battery, even if I knew that is was working fine when she brought it to us…. I put it back together and made a final power on test and it worked correctly. I was completely amazed and intrigued and pissed off and happy and felt like a dumb tehnician, all in 1 moment 😁😁😁
When you unplug the battery and check the voltage it is dead so what does kill switch have to do with that, another question what is that ribbon wire that goes from one end of the hard drive to the other, it has a right angle at the end.
The battery is NOT dead, I am talking about it around 22:51+. That's why measuring smart batteries at the connector is not reliable - in this case, unless BMS sees grounded trip wire (orange), it does not send any power out, even though the cells are fully charged.
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The ribbon cable connects a daughterboard with the power button (and a couple of ports) to the main board.
Please help. Is there a swtich for the acer an 517 54 ? the battery is ap18e8m
I haven't seen this specific model, but from what I've seen from Acer laptops with similar model numbers the internals are usually quite similar. So it is quite likely that there is disconnect switch on that model as well.
Won't the laptop be affected when plugged in with the battery switch. Just curious thnks
Not sure what you mean here? Open battery door switch just breaks power circuit, so no power flows to the laptop and it appears to be completely dead.
tl;dr: it was not a battery problem at all but a mechanical switch for detecting if the case is open turning off power to protect the motherboard.
Interesting find! Also, I could imagine a similar switch working not via a battery connector pin but with some logic next to the connector directly on the motherboard.
Unfortunately, even though the symptoms I see are similar (individual cells seem ok, no output on connector), I doubt this is the issue for my case, because a different battery works fine. I'm probably hitting one of the issues you expected with the... BMS, is that what that board is called?
The concept of recharge cycle counter disabling it that you mentioned really seems like a lawsuit-worthy scam to me.
Yep, not what I expected to find when I started the repair ;) Your issue indeed sounds like a BMS (battery management system) board problem, I've seen that happen with cells being fine. I wish recharge cycle counter would be a myth, but it is real, though certainly not every device has this "feature". If you have an opposite-case battery - e.g. BMS is fine, but cells are actually dead, you can frankenstein one working battery by replanting working BMS. Be careful though, it's not just recharge cycle counter - some BMS can detect if it is disconnected from the cells (e.g. rebuilding the pack), and will permanently shut down. This is not uncommon in power tool battery packs. So the way to avoid that scenario is to connect new cells in parallel to the old ones without disconnecting them from BMS first (effectively increasing battery capacity with the new cells with no power interruption), then disconnect the old cells, so BMS is not aware of the switcheroo. Again, not all BMS operate like that, but some do :(
How did you find the schematic for a pcb?
It was a while ago, but most likely on some internet forum. Can't recall for sure.
Can this laptop work if i remove its battery as it keeps getting switching off after some time
Generally, no. I am sure there are some exceptions out there, but for the most parts cell phones and laptops require somewhat working battery to work, even when all you want to do if use AC power. Battery doesn't need to hold any charge, but is needed to complete the power circuit.
Big Thanks to you....❤
Most welcome 😊
A bit of useful info for anyone who has this same problem. My issues were identical but i had the laptop off for several months. I charged it for about an hour with it on. Laptop said "255%" full. So something was going wrong. I ran the latest chipset installation directly from acer download page. Then restarted. Removed power cable and tried again, nothing. Repeated twice more (without changing anything else other than letting it charge between attempts) and it eventually worked. So in conclusion, it is worth checking your chipset driver and leaving the laptop of charge for about an hour before opening anything up. EDIT: My laptop now reads normal battery charge levels, now at 20% and charging and works off mains power.
Thanks, it is indeed true that after deep discharge of the battery (e.g. off for months) it might be difficult to bring it back to normal operations and will likely require some resuscitation steps (and even that might not work). So try these steps first!
Well done bro
Thanks!
Yoooo crazy🎉
:)
I couldn’t hear what u we’re saying and my phone was on max volume maybe it was just y phone but speak louder please no offense
Kml
:)