Acer laptop turns back on after shutdown

Toocool16

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Mar 19, 2012
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Hi,
I have a laptop that no matter which way you shut it down, it always powers back up a few seconds later.

I'm working with an Acer Aspire 6920 series. Vista Home Premium x86. 3.0GB of ram. 250GB hard drive. All drivers & updates done.

The hard drive & ram was just replaced in the laptop. Both have been tested and are working fine.

This is also on a brand new install of Vista Home Premium x86. The issue had not come up before Vista had been installed (apparently).

When not logged in & shutting down from the user menu it shuts down about 50% of the time. When logged into Windows, it almost never does a complete shut down.

Have gone into the BIOS and reset everything to default (There's not that many options to change anyways).

Have also gone through the power options in windows. Everything looks fine - and just for testing purposes I went into the advanced part and changed everything to shut down - still with no luck.

When the battery is pulled out - of course the laptop is off lol.

I'm thinking maybe a flash of the bios? The computer turns off fine from a Ubuntu livecd.

So any suggestions? Hardware issue *cough* motherboard? OS issue?

Would appreciate any help here. Have found very little information online about an issue like this.

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Just let it run in safe mode for a few minutes and upon shut down it restarted right away. Problem is still happening.

So if the hardware is fine, is it possible that the ACPI is corrupted/bad?

Even if I turn off the computer using just the power button and the problem still occurs does that still point to a software issue?

Interestingly enough, I have no problem shutting down the computer (just using the power button) when it has not booted to Windows yet.
 

mmaatt747

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Sep 26, 2011
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What was done immediately before the problem started occuring?

I see you changed ram, hard drive, and installed new operating system. Was the first time you used Vista also the first time the new harddrive was installed? In other words, did this change happen simultaneously?

Also, what do you mean when you say "The issue had not come up before Vista had been installed (apparently)." What do you mean by apparently?

 

Toocool16

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Mar 19, 2012
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I work as PC tech in northern Canada....

So the "apparently" is my uncertainty about what the customer has told me.

Nothing specific was done to my knowledge. The first time Vista was installed was also the first time the hard drive was installed. The previous hard drive was replaced because of bad sectors.
 

mmaatt747

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Sep 26, 2011
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Oh yea I understand. Other than the ACPI I'm wondering if there is something wrong with the power supply itself.

Also, just out of curiousity, if you operate the laptop without the battery installed (just running from the A/C adapter/charger) does it shutdown properly?
 

Toocool16

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Mar 19, 2012
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Hmm....I will try it without the battery.

I thought I had eliminated any doubt about bad hardware with the testing I did (liveCD Ubuntu). Wouldn't we see other problems if the power supply is bad?

Probably not even worth the time/money to replace a power supply on this anyways...
 

mmaatt747

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Sep 26, 2011
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Yea I hear ya. I was also thinking BIOS but you say you reset it to defaults manually. Are you able to get to the CMOS battery and pull it just to make SURE that BIOS is completely reset?
 

mmaatt747

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Sep 26, 2011
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Sorry Toocool I'm at a loss. I've seen online where some people had to make changes in their registry to fix the problem but I can't see where this would be the issue in your case.