I bought two Acer AL2416W monitors about 2 years ago when we were in Japan. Great monitors, high resolution, good colour, and they’re pretty cheap – only 100,000 yen new at the time, now they’re down near the $450AU mark.
But a few months ago, my wife and I were eating dinner, and there was a loud POP! We looked around, didn’t see what it was, I figured just a small book fell over or something. Then again. POP! I looked around, this time saw smoke coming out of one of the Acer’s, ran over and unplugged it.
After that, nada. Plug it back in, whatever, nothing happened. ACER logo would flash, but then it would power save.
Now, this would be unexceptional – random bits of hardware do fail from time to time, and in the IT industry one just shrugs, and buys another, and moves on. Thats what I did.
Now, I’m wishing I didn’t. The SECOND monitor I bought in Japan, at the same time, both dated with build date of 2005/11, have died. The second one died in exactly the same way with the same behavior. Now, this time, I’m going to open it up and figure out what went wrong because that’s just shoddy electronics. Acer should be ashamed. Crappy products. I’ll never buy another piece of hardware from them again.
Now I have a monitor sitting on my desk, dated 2007/11, and I hope that it survives long enough for me to experience my new computer when it arrives.
Couldn’t recommend buying ACER to anyone anymore.
Did you ever figure out the problem?
I just had the same experience.
Thanks!
Brent
Unfortunately no. It might have been a bad batch, I guess.
Hey! Just happened to see this thread. I have the same Acer LCD you guys are talking about and this exact thing just happend to mine! It was 2 pops, about 10 seconds apart…and then no more monitor. I had a guy look at it and he was able to locate exactly the part that needs to be replaced. The problem is that the part is not available yet to the aftermarket. The part number he gave me is: PK07V00330I . Google gives no hits on this part number so I am assuming this is an internal Acer part number or something. feel free to contact me: bigd_boy@yahoo.com
Yep, the same thing happened to me… and there is a happy ending. The failed part is the inverter board – they cost bout $90 and I think it plugs into a socket. The Acer repair guy quoted $50 to install (as I considered preventive maintenance for my other monitor).
The monitors have three years warranty, either from the date of manufacture or date of purchase. I found the original invoice (2 years and 11 months) as the manufacture date was three years and one month. I registered the monitor on the Acer website (simple) then registered the warranty claim (simple) I received an rma and addresses of repair agents. There is one in Calgary (near my work) so I took it in (Having bought a replacement pair of monitors :( ) Next day he calls – all fixed. Zipped round, got the monitor and took back the new pair :). File it under a result… You can find the inverter board on ebay and repair shops. The monitor is back to normal so all in all – it end result was great.
Hope this helps anyone out there.
Hi !
Exactly the same thing just happen with our al2416w.
It was manufactured 2005-10
Probably it was realy bad batch
I’d have try to repair it!
Very usefull info there
Hi dudes, same thing here.
I bought it on 06/2006, it lasted for a year and a half, then inverted problem. They swapped it with a new one (dead pixel :(), and lasted for about one more year. Then, same story..
It wend to their support again, but came back still unable to start.
I tried to get someone at their call center let me know what to do to get a eaplcement, but they won’t answer me, they almost insulted me, and hang up… worst after-sale support I ever had.
I think the whole line is defected, and they won’t admit it.
So you’re right, never ever buy acer again :(
I’ve got the same problème
Here is the part to order : Inverter Board AA668.TBD292LF TDK
at this adresse :
http://www.zandparts.com/acer/index.php?cPath=1_2_727
mine too bd 2006.02 inverter board pop!
Easy dude’s, if it “pops” it’s most likely the capacitors on the board. There are 8 in two glued together banks, and 2 more not in group.
They are 35v 100 microfarad caps. Mine had 4 that were swollen, and you could tell they had leaked onto the printed circuit board.
It may have knocked out other parts, but these cost almost nothing and are very common. Buy a soldering iron for 5 bucks and some caps, replace them (all?) and plug it back in and try it before reassembling the monitor 100%.
The only price I saw was 104 euros that’s like $175 US…. Forget that! You can disassemble the monitor in 10 mins with a standard #2 screwdriver. Take all the main screws out that you can see, pull off the cover over the hinge for the stand, plull that, use a flat bladed screwdriver to pry on a lower corner and work your way until you can fit your fingers in and pull off the back. Pull the middle metal sheilding plate, there’s the board on the left with the 6 cables and 12 transformers in a nice row and look for those coke can looking things, replace them, and give it a try.
If that doesn’t work, it just “drives” the ccfl lights. Guess where you can get cheap driver boards… Those 2 light kits for case modding your pc with colored lights. If you go to an electronics supply, you can normally cut a deal to buy 3 of the power supplies from them (usually a little blue box with molex connector) where the ccfl glass tubes came broken on shipping or a customer broke them.
If you don’t feel like messing with the power supply to get the 12 v’s necessary to to run these three, find a powerful ac/dc adapter being tossed out, and run another power cord to the back of the monitor for it and use on the of the switches from the case mod lights.
You’ll have to manually switch on the backlight when you want to use the monitor, but it’s really easy to do… My wife’s monitor was someones trash and FREE, same problem, hit power, screen comes on for a few seconds, then off… again and again.
Try this… once you do it, everyones “burned out” LCD’s go from thier trash to your treasure. I found this forum because I just got given a broken 24″ 16:9 ACER. Rock on!!!! I have been taking pics, maybe I’ll do a blog post how to…
Had this same problem with my AL2416W. I loved the size, color, and brightness of this monitor. It seems rather coincidental that it popped just a couple of months after it has gone out of warranty.
I called Acer Support, got an animated voice system that wouldn’t let me through to a real person to talk to and recognized my number when I called back… kinda creepy.
When I finally called their main number a woman answered the phone sounding completely unprofessional. I started trying to explain I wanted to talk to someone about the warranty on my monitor that had just died, she cut me off mid-sentence with an annoyed sounding laugh and forwarded me on to a nearly unintelligibly accented and outsourced Support Center. At first I thought she had hung up on me.
In any case, the whole experience left a really bad taste in my mouth about Acer. I used to think they were good monitors, but now I will refuse to buy their products ever again.
I just opened mine, and the inverter had 4 blown capacitors. I read above what kind they are but anyone know where to buy these capacitors from?
It is quite common for the capacitors to fail on a lot of electronics, including power supplies and inverters in lcd’s, so it’s not always the manufacturer’s fault as they generally don’t know, not so much shoddy workmanship but a lot of bad capacitors out there due to manufacturing flaws in the electrolite used in them.
Seems 2-3 years of continuous use is the limit for anything with bad caps in it and is the most common failure in any lcd monitor these days. From the best of the best brands to the cheap knock off brands.
If you replace them you want low esr caps, not just the run of the mill standard ones you buy from radio shack, dick smith’s etc. It may work for a while if you don’t use low esr caps but it won’t work for to long. The other problem you may encounter is it’s not just the caps that went, as the capacitors are there to essentially filter the the power from all the hums and interference of the mains supply and high frequency circuitry on said board, when they’re failing or failed they no longer perform this function and in turn other devices on the board will be fed unfiltered/unclean power and fluctuations in the voltage they recieve and pop they can go also(generally the components like the transitor’s used in the high frequency side of the LCD back lighting to fire inverter transformer’s).
If you know someone that is handy with electronics and your LCD is out of warranty you may be lucky to get it repaired for a slab of beer & $10-$20 worth of parts as to the cost of a new monitor.
I like this monitor ans all, but, same thing just happened to mine. Just before warranty runs out. Got it back today, seems to work ok. Tempted to sell it quick and get something else. Acer? Ya right. The service center was painful to deal with.
I was also given one of these, so I have nothing to lose by trying to repair it.
After a lot of trawling forums I found that these are what need to be replaced.
http://www.chsinteractive.co.uk/electrical-components/misc/ass-mod-p2804bdg-general-transistor-ass-make.htm
and
http://www.chsinteractive.co.uk/electrical-components/misc/ass-mod-p5504edg-general-transistor-ass-make.htm
As you can see I am in the UK but you should be able to source them wherever you are.
Hope this helps. :)
Sorry, previous links were for the transistors, which are often also affected.
the capacitors are these.
http://www.chsinteractive.co.uk/electrical-components/general-components/capacitors-electrolytics/electrolytics-radial-105c-low-esr/35v-radial-105c-low-esr/100uf-35v-radial-electrolytic-105c-low-esr-low-impedance-8×11mm.htm
The website I found these on show the three items as ‘also boughts’ so that would suggest that they have been bought for the same purpose.