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pogeymanz

Member

Registered: 2008-03-11

Posts: 1,020

[SOLVED??]Help me figure out this bizarre ACPI/hardware problem.

This has had me stumped. I posted a topic in the Laptop forum, but I've decided to post a new topic here because I think it may require some hardware investigation.

Since a few weeks ago, ACPI acts oddly. When I close my laptop's lid, the acpi lid event is not triggered until I perform another power-related acpi event!

For example. I can run acpi_listen in a terminal. I will close my lid and open it and nothing will appear in the terminal. Then if I unplug my laptop, the screen blanks and the lid button event shows up in the terminal. If I plug the laptop back in, the second lid event (from opening it) will show up. This is the output from that exercise:

[rob ~ ]$  acpi_listen 
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000001
ac_adapter ACAD 00000080 00000000
battery BAT1 00000080 00000001
button/lid LID0 00000080 00000002
ac_adapter ACAD 00000080 00000001
battery BAT1 00000080 00000001

I tried rolling back the acpi and acpid packages to old versions I had in my cache. I have three versions of acpid and two of acpi, so I've tried all six combos of those to no avail.

I had some current Linux distro iso's around, so I tried the current versions of Fedora and PCLOS as liveCD's, and they are doing the same thing. I am currently downloading Ubuntu 10.04 in hopes that maybe something a little older will work right and then I can just say it's software.

The weird thing is that this was working perfectly since December, when I got the laptop.

I fear that this is a hardware problem. That will be super annoying and I'll have to find an easy way to clone the disk and put the original Windows 7 back on it... But what hardware problem would cause this kind of error?

What else can I try here, guys?

Last edited by pogeymanz (2011-06-27 20:11:34)

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: [SOLVED??]Help me figure out this bizarre ACPI/hardware problem.

You could just try an older version of a Live Linux CD and that would pretty much confirm it is a hardware rather than an OS/kernel fault. I would also just try getting into your BIOS and resetting everything to BIOS defaults and see if that helps.

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Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

pogeymanz

Member

Registered: 2008-03-11

Posts: 1,020

Re: [SOLVED??]Help me figure out this bizarre ACPI/hardware problem.

Well, this is a treat...

I tried the Ubuntu 10.04 CD and the computer suspended as soon as I closed the lid. Wonderful!
Then I opened a terminal and ran acpi_listen and tried again.... nothing...

For whatever reason, I was inspired to shut the machine off and remove and replace the battery. I rebooted and it's been working fine.

The horrible part about this is that I must have rebooted this machine 10,000 times and played with the battery 1,000 times since I'd discovered the issue.

I have a feeling this wont be the last I see of this problem...