Member Avatar for Stefano Mtangoo

I have been given acer 5100 and pressing power button it light momentarily and goes off. It will not boot anything, until I press power button and then hold down F9 or F10 keys then it will boot as usual and things goes well. I have even upgraded the bios to latest 3.1.3.
I'm running out of ideas and I thought I would ask. Since I'm not sure what the issue is then I though I would post here

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Short summary and what the F-keys mean: the symptom you describe (power LED flashes, machine dies, then boots only when you hold F9 or F10 during power-up) is consistent with the firmware being forced past a POST/setting check by loading and accepting BIOS defaults. On Acer notebooks F9 is the BIOS "load defaults" key and F10 saves/exits the setup, so holding those keys at the logo will force the firmware to accept defaults and continue. (community.acer.com)

Practical troubleshooting (work top-to-bottom):

  • Do a full power reset first: unplug AC, remove the battery (if removable), then hold the power button 20–30 seconds to drain residual power. Reconnect and test. (community.acer.com)
  • Reseat parts you can reach without special tools: RAM (try one module at a time) and the hard drive bracket/connector. Try booting with the hard drive removed — if the laptop gets to BIOS/POST without the drive, that points at the drive or its connector. (insidemylaptop.com)
  • Test the drive separately: listen for clicking (mechanical failure) and, if possible, connect the drive to another PC or a USB-SATA adapter and run a SMART check (tools like CrystalDiskInfo). If the drive is noisy or SMART shows errors, back up data and replace the drive. (ifixit.com)
  • In BIOS, load defaults (F9) and save (F10), then check boot order and any "quick boot" or POST-delay settings that might let the drive finish spin-up before the POST check. (community.acer.com)

Diagnosis and options: on some Aspire 5100 machines users have reported flaky HDD connectors or IDE-channel issues; if the laptop boots reliably with the HDD removed, the connector or the drive itself is the prime suspect and may require reseating, replacing the drive, or (less commonly) board-level repair. For an old laptop, swapping the drive for a known-good one or cloning it to an external disk/SSD is the most cost-effective route. (insidemylaptop.com)

Notes tied to the thread: was right to flag the drive/connector as a likely place to check, and ’s BIOS update (3.1.3) makes a simple firmware bug less likely. If immediate data recovery matters, remove the drive and image it before further tests. If the owner accepts the F-key workaround and data is safe, that is a pragmatic short-term solution.

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Member Avatar for Member #682468

I've read that some of that model have faulty hard drive connectors and won't work until the POST tests are bypassed.

I would try changing your boot order because you never know; maybe the bus connecting to the HDD takes a few extra moments to get on-line causing boot to normally fail, or maybe you can bypass some tests through the BIOS.

This is the manual that includes troubleshooting and how to disassemble/reassemble the computer:

Member Avatar for Stefano Mtangoo

Thank. The ownerdecided would go that way, start with F key pressed. I adviced to go that way since there is no fix and it does not hurt anyway!

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