Acer Z5610 Gives Unexpected Shutdown Problems With No Error Notifications.

We have more than 20 of this model in our repair shop at the moment. All with the exact same issue. Instant shutdown, as though power has been unplugged. There is no reliabe repair for this. We have been through the process of isolating the fault, in most cases it is either the motherboard or the GPU (or both). Neither of which are available as new parts from Acer (only refurbished). And the parts supplied are as unreliable as the parts they are replacing. This is a dud machine, Z5610 should have been recalled. Acer support advise they have had no reports of this fault, but will "investigate"...

The problem is the aero interface of Windows 7, switch your theme to windows 7 Basic and your problem is gone!

I think the problem is that the mainboard and GPU get into a "fight" sometimes.

It is clearly a production fault but this workaround will let your users still go home with a good working Z5610

I had the same problem with my Windows 7 Home Premium Acer Z5610. I would turn it on, it would boot up then shut down. When I restarted it would stay on a little bit longer then shut down again. After restart it would stay on a bit longer each time, but generally no more than 1 hour before shutting down again. No errors were reported, except for windows did not shut down .

This started happening after a windows "update" a few months ago. I figured it must have something to do with windows settings conflicting with the CPU/motherboard (I am no IT technician, just a curious Electronics Technician).

I solved it by changing the Advanced system Settings from "Let windows decide what is the best settings for my computer" to "Adjust for best performance"....(Control panel, System and security, system. advanced system settings, performance, settings and check "adjust for best performance").....

This seemed to deselect about 30 checked boxes.

 

I have not had the system shut down for over a week now, and it even seems to work better??

Hope this helps..

Mark

I had exactly the same problem. Cleaning fans did not work. 

The problem is in GPU (my version was ATI HD 4670. I switched it to nVIDIA GeForce GT240M 1024 MXM (I ordered  a used one from eBay for about 100Euros;). The problem is gone - my Z5610 works again with aero & doesn't switch off! The new graphis card is a little bit slower then ATI, but I don't play games - for everything else is powerful enough!

Advice: when you first install the new GPU and your previous one was from ATI, computer will NOT run for the first time (the screen was dark). You have to switch the PC off by pressing the POWER burton dor about 8 sec., than turn on again and the system boots up normaly. You also need to check your bios version and if it's not P01.B2, you have to update it FIRST! 

I also noticed when I run SpeedFan (app that shows you the CPU and GPU temperature), it was not showing the GPU temperature before with ATI. Now it shows the GPU temperature of nVidia correctly!

I had the exact same problem with my Z5610 and here's how I solved it.

1. The CPU and GFX cores were not overheating and the fans were spinning up as normal so I could discount that theory.

2. I'm running windows 7 and the aero theme was active, causing the shutdowns. I was unable to access the theme settings in safe mode (F8) and unable to access the theme settings from the standard desktop (machine would shut down every time I tried).

3. The issue was definitely a graphics card problem (mine was an ATI card). I installed the latest radeon drivers for my machine from the ATI website. Rebooted and could then access the theme settings from the desktop. I deselected aero and went with a more traditional desktop.

4. To be on the safe side I also disabled some of the desktop eye candy that utilises the graphics card core or subroutines. Go to start button > right click my computer > advanced system settings > click the settings button for performance > select adjust for best performance > apply > ok out of the open windows.

5. Do a final reboot and viola !!  No more shutdown problem.

<

The problem is definately the GPU and/or the CPU overheating. Mine would shut down when ever there was any decent load on the graphics card. If you sit the computer on your desk with the back off exposing its guts you will notice that the GPU gets increadibly hot before the fan will even kick in. I have had mine sitting on my bench now for a couple of days with the back off, giving the video card a thrashing while a small auxillary fan cools the GPU and it hasn't shut down once. Just to clarify, there was never any dust in the heatsinks and the heatsink compound on the GPU and CPU is plentifull. I am sure that part of the problem is caused by the cooling fans kicking in too late so for now I'm just going to unplug them from the mobo and rewire them to run all the time (cut the white and yellow wires). If someone can mod the bios to give a bit more manual controll over the fans please let me know.

 Please note, this solution has worked for me in solving the shut downs due to high CPU and GPU load but this particular PC still shuts down when you try to use the Aero theme.

Hello,

I can confirm that switching "Windows 7 Aero" to "Windows 7 Basic" also worked for an Acer Z5610, which I got from one of my friends for repair. I really tried anything else like cleaning the fans, changing the memory, changing the power supply, re-install the system, update drivers etc. "Switch off Aero" was the solution. Many thanks for this hint.

Best regards
VPood7805

Buy yorself a desktop fan put it behind the computer and run it all te time the pc is on. Basically i hoover myn out reguly .. I think the computer was not fit for purpose and ACER should recall it.. I will never buy an ACER again..

Stick will Dell or HP next day onsite service contracts available at low prices from there sites .. They send an engineer to you..

Probem with all these ACER S, Isus and Toshibas rubbish Service ,parts etc etc

take it apart and clean off the fans and the copper coloured heatsinks above them, the grills were clogged full of dust after ownign it for 2 years ..now running without any shut downs and it was shutting down 8-10 times a day!

40 years in IT and I don'ty even have to think about this.

Yes it is the processor overheating eventually you'll stuff your filesystem and not be able to boot.  Get speedfan on it to prove to yourself that the temp rise until it goes kaput. 

open it up and clean the fluff and dirt from the heat sink.

Theres a really good youtube clip showing you exactly how to do all of this, you just need to ignore the Polish commentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7vpJTdmMAg

Cheers

Bill