amilo-forum.com

[RhapsodyOfFire]

Hello. I have a strange issue on Amilo Si 2636 notebook. When I turn it on it has Win7 and XP installed but just as it loads the logo no matter the OS it shut downs itself and powers on again after 3-4 seconds but not immediately like a restart. The touchpad and hdd diodes start to blink in a strange way. They are blinking one after another but not together and after that it shut downs. I removed the wireless and modem boards behind the keyboard and the interface cable to the touchpad with no difference. The diodes are probably a signal of a damaged component or something.
Tests:
It is not overheating issue because I already changed the thermal compound and cleaned the fan.
The ram is okay using memtest86 4.10
I tried removing the battery and using another power adapter with no difference. The adapter also has higher output current (watts) with same voltage required.
Not wireless/modem/touchpad as I removed them.
Hardly a virus as I scanned with NOD32, Avast and Malwarebytes.

[hikaru]

Can you boot Windows in safe mode?

[RhapsodyOfFire]

Safe mode in XP works fine but Event Viewer shows no critical/error events at all. Safe mode in Win7 don't work and so is Startup Repair. They make the notebook shutting down.
It's interesting to note that after connecting the power adapter even with battery the Notebook won't turn on. It needs like 3-4 seconds to be connected in order to power on the first time. Like it has to build up an electrical charge in it first.
I've tried pressing Fn+F6 to disable the touchpad manually but the light still flashes. The VGA/CPU chips look ok(not burned).
Disable automatic restart on system failure doesn't make a difference. It is a sudden shutdown like when there is a problem with ACPI on some of the devices. The issue is not affiliated with a BSOD.
When the diodes start to blink the monitor goes blank/black.

[hikaru]

Win XP loads the graphics drivers during the splash screen, so a laptop that crashes in normal mode during this splash screen but works fine in safe mode (where only a very basic graphics driver without any acceleration is loaded) usually is a pretty safe indicator for a defective graphics card.
This might also match the behavior of not showing a BSOD because the graphics card might simply shut down.

I guess the power adapter problem seems to be a different issue. Does your laptop turn on at all without power adapter, so only on battery?
You said you use a 3rd-party adapter. Even if voltage and power are correct there might still be a problem with the output of that adapter. During the AC-DC transformation the output will usually be smoothed which your new adapter might not do as well s the original one. One would have to monitor the outputs of both adapters to be sure. I've heard of netbooks that got damaged that way.

[RhapsodyOfFire]

It usually is damaged VGA simply not visible on the chip. I encountered such issue before but the Win 7 logo is flashing and is GPU intensive. Integrated VGA hardly display it with good FPS. I am currently running a Video Memory stress test CE v.1.21 and it appears it doesn't recognize the product version, vendor name and device name yet it shows some weird symbols like crosses and thick vertical lines "|" but 2-3 times thicker and dots between the symbols.
No errors reported so far and 2 passes already completed. I booted Ubuntu later version and it was stable. No video issues so it hardly would be VGA. I played online high quality videos too. The vga on Ubuntu doesn't give a big performance through.

Ubelievable I used Windows 7 instalation cd to start the recovery console from there and reset the MBR/Bootsector and it shut down the same way. Recently I encountered such behavior on another Amilo notebook Pi 2516 or something and it happened to be the heatsink. Not the fan but the Cu(copper) metal transporting the heat. The CPU overheated but not so much hot air was coming out so it was hard to tell what was happening. The computer was shutting down at
-booting os
-booting installation cd/usb installation
-booting even ERD Commander...
-booting Mini XP
Always around the booting logo screen so basiclly at that moment the anti high temperature system was activating or something like that but doesn't seemed to be because of high CPU usage. New heatsink was like maybe 100$ not even with a new fan!
The cpu temperature showed around 60 degrees in Mini XP not having much usage/calculations so it could be overheating. The fan stops from time to time. I flashed the Bios from 1.0A to 1.0H with no change in the issue.

This could hardly be overheating issue having in mind the notebook restarts/turn on itself. Overheat would cause permament shutdown. Some computers even don't allow to be powered on after such event until they cool down.
HDD regenerator finished with no bad sectors. I tried another hdd with the same result. I tried another power adapter (fortron) with 4.74 amperes max so it is very good one. 90 watts total and a lot more than the required ~65 watts. I even removed the hdd so no interface would be used and started win 7 installation from usb hdd with no difference.
The notebook is powering the usb to hdd device even when the notebook is turned off. This could be an issue. Computers ususally don't do that unless there is an option to be waken up by such event like mouse/keyboard button.
The bios only has "wake up from LAN" and it is disabled. I tried the usb hdd device on another notebook when it is off and the diode doesn't light up.
The notebook is working while only on battery.
I removed the lens cables for the cd rom, speakers, touchpad and now the hdd and touchpad no longer blink one after another but only the touchpad diode blinks. Something caused a difference but the shutdown occurs the same way. I removed the upper ram behind the keyboard too while testing.
I reset the bios manually and no difference .