Sudden black screen when batterie is on 20%

I experience the following behavior regularly.
My AAO works great with Linpus. In the batterie program I specified that on 7% of batterie life the AAO should go in standby. However, I really never get that far.
I noticed that around 20% batterie life, the screen just goes blank (dark) while the AAO is still up and running (power light and WLAN is still on, and the fan is still blowing). There is no way to wake up the screen. I have to shut off the AAO by holding down the power button for 5 seconds. After I charge the batterie it works fine again.

Does anybody have a solution to this problem? I am running the latest BIOS V3309, however, I experience the same problems with an older BIOS version.

Any ideas out there?

 

I think it just going into sleep mode.When that happens to me,,I dont have to Hold the power button down shut it down,,,I just have to hit the Power Button to wake it up..

Give that a try,,If that doesnt work,,,Im sure someone here will be able to help you.

 

Well, it happens as I type. So why should it go to sleep mode while I'm actually working with it :?
Maybe there is somebody out there that has an idea?
I was already thinking about loading a new version if kpowersave. What do you think? Will this help?

 

I don't remember what is what in Linpus but in Mandriva there is a setting for power management for on AC power and on battery power under battery power there is a setting for "When battery is critically low you can select either do nothing, suspend or shut down. I don't know how or what is considered critically low, but you could have a default setting that puts your AAO to sleep when the battery gets to a certain point that is locked out in Linpus ( not adjustable by normal users. there are other settings also but I feel only this one could pertain to this post.

 

Hi,

I have the exact same problem. It just crashes while battery power is around 20%, and no way to wake it up. Maybe kpowersave's measures are inaccurate, and we just need to set its 2 percentages higher than 20%?

 

I found a thread here in this forum where it points to an actual hardware problem which would really suck. I would hate to send it in :evil:
However, the XP people here fix the problem with a different WebCam driver - but this only applies to XP. Somehow this gives me hope that it is a software problem after all.
We'll see...

Here is the thread indicating that it might be a hardware issue:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1566&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=battery+standby+black

Here is the thread where people fix it under XP with a different WebCam driver:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=8367&p=55550#p55550

 

Interesting. Someone in the first thread says it doesn't happen when xmms is running. And when I listen to internet radio in Firefox, it doesn't happen either. Sometimes Firefox freezes after 20% and some other stuff crashes, but on the whole the system keeps running...

 

I created a Ubuntu 8.10 Live usb and booted the Aspire One from that usb. Everything seems to work well with Ubuntu (graphics, sound, ethernet, webcam) and the 20% problem doesn't occur anymore!

This really seems to indicate some kind of software problem with Linpus.

 

Re: Sudden black screen when battery is on 20%

I think I found a solution to fix the battery problem.
I havent done enough testing but last night I got down to 7% battery left - which is good
I followed the instructions from macles in this post:
http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/12/acer ... y-dvd.html

What it does it will install (recovery DVD) from a pretty new Acer Linpus release 1.0.15E on my AAO I had 1.0.6E.
After the installation I ran LiveUpdate. That was pretty much it.
Of course, all your data and custom setup (eMail, Skype etc.) is lost which you will have to configure again, but I hope it was worth it.
Like I said, I have to do some more testing but so far it looks good. I'll keep you posted and maybe other people can try it to and post in this thread their experiences. Lets hope we found a solution to it!

 

Good to hear that. I ended up installing Ubuntu which, after a lot of tweaking, runs quite well now. Never experienced the battery problem since I installed it.

 

What How-To did you follow and what tweaks did you install? Does Wifi, WebCam and the expansion slots work without problems?
The thing I really like about Linpus is its fast boot up. How fast does Ubuntu boot?

 

using linpus lite 1.0.15.E never experienced any of these probs..

i tap the SpaceBar when it goes into standby and it wakes up, no probs.

what might also help you guys is updating kpowersave: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3760&p=31780&hilit=kpower#p31780

hope my 2 cents help you guys out

 

I mostly followed this one: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne110L
I updated the kernel to the one described here: http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7560
And I fixed a problem with the gnome-power-management settings as described here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=963832
All in all it was quite a lot of work. Updating Linpus as you did would have been a lot easier, I suppose.

Not sure about wifi and the expansion slots, as I don't use them (the logs say that the wifi driver is loaded correctly, will try to test it soon). I tested the webcam in Skype, worked perfectly out-of-the-box. Getting the microphone to work required some extra work though.

Linpus boots faster for sure. But Ubuntu boots in a reasonable time too, especially after applying all the tweaks mentioned in that Howto and after installing that custom kernel.

Well, that was one of the first things I tried too, but it didn't work. Haven't tried to update kpowersave though.

 

Update: I managed to reproduce the 20% battery problem in Ubuntu too.
One part of the howto that I didn't do yet was the part about the card readers:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne110L#Card Readers
In this part they mention a script called jmb38x_d3e.sh, which I downloaded. I added it to the rc.local file, rebooted, and the black screen at 20% started happening again.
When I removed it from rc.local, all was fine again. When I manually executed that script while battery power lower than 20%, I had a black screen within a few seconds.

So apparently that script (which probably ran on my original Linpus too) does something that my Aspire One doesn't like if power is less than 20%.

 

More specifically, it's this line that causes the black screen:

Code:

[ -w /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/level ] && echo auto > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/level

Anybody knows what that line does? What are the consequences of not doing that echo?

 

tap the keyboard keys usually wakes the netbook up. Be aware if you press the power key you may end up powering off yout netbook.

 

There's no way to wake it up: tried the keyboard, the mouse, Ctrl-Alt-F2... even ssh from a remote machine doesn't work anymore, so the machine is quite dead, except that the power light is still on and the fan is still running.
Also, it's not a normal sleeping mode, because it enters it even while I'm typing something.

 

Seems to be a fairly common problem. The first AA1 that I bought died at 60%. I sent it back to the retailer as faulty and got a replacement.

My guess is that either the battery or the voltage regulators are faulty.

 

Interestingly, the device at /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5 is the webcam. As mentioned earlier, XP users had similar problems that were solved by updating the webcam driver.

 

My AA1 was running Linpus...