Hi, I have here an Acer Aspire 3000 (Windows XP SP3) which freezes on the login screen, the cursor keeps flashing but all input sources (keyboard/mouse/touchpad) become disabled. Weird enough, the battery seems to be the culprit.

When the battery is detached from the machine (thus only the mains), it works fine, and does not freeze. Trying to boot it with the battery power alone seems not to work, also it doesn't seem to recharge.

Explanation:

http://www.fixya.com/support/t141435...yboard_failing

They also conclude it's the battery that's causing it. Yet there are no follow-up reactions whether or not this problem can be fixed by replacing the battery.

I don't know if buying a new battery will fix this problem, or that the laptop would break the new battery as well.

Any thoughts on this? Or things I could test to make sure the battery is really dead?

for the cost of about £3.50 its worth the effort of getting a replacement battery. The laptop is highly unlikely the reason why the battery is dead. how old is the laptop?

About 2 years old. Out of warranty. Replacement battery costs between 70 GBP and 163 Euro. Some other guy said it could be a broken motherboard, but my experience with broken motherboards is that it's pretty lethal for a laptop.

But indeed my best bet is trying to replace the battery. It's description was AS3005WLMI. I just hope I don't get bad imitations, if the originals already die after 2 years, I don't want to know what kind of hazards an imitation brings along.

At this distance it looks like some sort of short or dry solder on whatever lies behind the battery. Often that joint is on the motherboard but, as you say, laptops are not easiest to fix inside.

On the other hand, a PC Doctor should be able to look see and hopefully fix within the 1 hour fee.

I wiil check some prices for you as the Missus' Acer has killed its psu. BUT if you dont need to use it on the battery then dont - nice and easy CHEAP workaround!

Thanks for all the help, guys (and gals).

I reread the thread at the fixya forum, where I now saw some replies that said that replacing the battery _did_ fix the problem.

Ofcourse this is still a minority, but at least it's better than none.

The simplest solution here would be to find a second (working) Acer laptop which uses the same battery as the 'broken' one.

Then switch their batteries and check which laptop freezes, if the originally 'broken' one does it again, it's the solder or something related. If the second one starts doing it, it would strengthen the idea that the battery is truly the culprit.