AA1 Shuts off, temp is 35 C, fan works... ideas?

Ok so I've had this AA1 (A110 model) for a couple months now. It started as very intermittent, but now it happens all the time. Im running XP SP3, nothing special. I have the 3310 bios, upgraded to 1.5gb of kingston ram, and samsung 60gb ipod hd.

I pulled it up and inserted the power plug into the motherboard with the mobo unscrewed from the case. This way I could tilt it up and watch the fan operate. The fan starts as soon as the netbook is powered on. But I noticed that the fan runs even though the temp is around 35 degrees according to A1ctl. I have it set so that fan turns on at 40 degrees. So I dont understand that part....

But basically I verified the fan works.

So I put it all back together and start it up. The temp starts around 35... sometimes I get 3 mins of run time, sometimes more, sometimes less. Once, the other day, I got it to run overnight because I didnt touch it, and let it go into standby to see how long it would run. I woke it up and it ran for a couple mins before shutting off again.

I have it running right now, and the fan is running on high and the temp is 36 C... I have it set to turn the fan off under 40 C, and go into auto at 45 C. As it sits here and runs I can hear the fan slowly trail off in speed until it stops.

I now notice with it running the battery time is jumping around from 1:35 to 1:49. Even though the temp is now at 37, when the battery time jumped the fan kicked back on immediately. Then another battery jump from 1:30's up to 1:50's. And the fan kicks on again as soon as the jump happens, then slowly trails back off. This is on a fully charged 3 cell. I've been meaning to replace the battery. Do you think the battery is my problem? It never shows over 2 hours of op time. The time dropped down to the 1:19 range then back up to the 1:40 range. Temp was around 40 degrees, then the AA1 kicked off again. Total op time was around 7 minutes. Not bad for how quickly it's been doing this lately.

It will also do this when plugged in, with or without the battery inserted and running on battery alone, it's very indiscriminent. Which is why I thought it wasnt the battery.

After a stint in the freezer I started it up with the battery out and plugged into the wall, the start up temp was 19 C. The fan came on initially on high and then over the span of a minute or so, slowly reduced speed to very slow, but not off. The fan randomly kicks back up to high speed after about 5 minutes of running, and the temp is only 25 C. After being on high for a minute or so, it slowly works it's way back down to low. Temp is 29 C now. At 30 C the fan kicks back up to high and then begins again to slowly taper off. Fan cycles back up again at 33 C and again at 36 C, and one more time at 39 C and then it shuts off. This time the AA1 runs for 20 minutes.

All this and im doing nothing with the AA1, it's sitting there, windows loaded and a blank desktop.

So it seems I have a temperature control problem. Obviously my fan isnt listening to the A1ctl program at all. The fan shouldnt be coming on until 40 C, and runs at one speed or another constantly under 40 C. And it seems at or around 40 C, the AA1 shuts down.

Any ideas what could be causing my laptop to shut down? Should I order a new battery even if I dont think it's my problem (but seems like it's messed up anyway)?

 

Ok so I removed the fan, added better thermal paste to the two IC's underneath and cinched it back down. No change.

I ordered a 6 cell battery from ebay, installed it. No change. This one I didnt think would fix it, but hey, it was worth a shot, looked like I needed a new battery.

I am no back to the drawing board. The AA1 operates fine when it stays powered on. Everything works. But it just wont stay on once it hits about 40 degrees...

Also the fan seems to be kicking on and off despite the settings in the A1ctl program.

Could this be caused by my Samsung Ipod HD? I dont see how, but that's what im leaning torwards, probably because I dont want to admit to myself that it's probably the mobo...

Any ideas??

 

You have a different model (below), but my A1ctl "idle" temp is 54C and I have the application set to 52 / 55 / 65 - you have more RAM than me - I don't know how your system gets that low temperature. I will say that I originally installed the "old" 0.4 version of A1ctl and ran it happily for a year, but when I tried to use the new 1.0 update it didn't work right on my machine - I removed it and went back to the old version and I'm happy again with it. (The A1ctl update was for later BIOS versions, which I am in no hurry to install.)

But you might want to simply remove A1ctl to see if running the fan at default settings stops the shutdown problem. That would tell you something useful about what you're thinking now.

I'd agree with you that an iPod HDD also raises some questions. My experience with motherboards has been "all or none" but in any case I'd eliminate other possible causes.

 

Thanks for the help. I just booted to safe mode, runs great, fan speed stays constant, doesnt shut down. So it's definitely a software problem. Im gonna download an older version of A1ctl, but I know that my BIOS is the 3310 version so im not sure how that's going to affect the older version of A1ctl, but I'll give it a shot.

 

Well it definitely runs without the A1ctl. Which is strange. No more shut downs. But I was mainly using A1ctl to get rid of the HD head parking. Which of course is now back.

I dont want to mess with BIOS flashing to an older BIOS, I tried that with an old AA1 and it didnt take, and turned the netbook into a worthless piece of junk!

 

I agree with your decisions here - no loss in trying out the older A1ctl - I've found it really handy for several of the features in addition to fan control, but I think the developer got a little overwhelmed at the end of his project with all the continual BIOS updates that Acer was putting out. I skipped all the BIOS updates because 3301 worked fine on my model from the day I opened the box, but wouldn't recommend trying to go backward. At least you've got a good working PC.

 

It must be A1ctl in general... both old and new versions of the app send my fan into a constant cycle from high, medium, low, then off... and then a minute later, it starts it again. And at 40 degrees, it promptly shuts off.

Now I have Hddquiet to make the heads stop parking, and it works great, and everything works fine!