Not sure what to suspect - motherboard or cpu?

Computer Forum CPU, Motherboards and Memory
1

I’ve got an older Acer Aspire 3000 laptop kicking around, with a 1.8 ghz sempron and 512mb of ram. I’d like to install xubuntu on it, but the problem is I’ve gotta get it running first…

When I try to boot off of the live CD it halts about halfway into the boot, and the same thing happens trying to boot into the existing windows xp install. I downloaded and booted from the ultimate boot cd. On all of the available cpu stress tests (cpu burn in, prime, etc) the laptop will run the test for about 2 minutes and then shut off completely. I don’t believe that it’s overheating - I’ve cleaned out all the dust from the heat sink and it doesn’t feel hot to the touch. The laptop will also shut down running Memtest+, but that will take longer, usually 20 or 30 minutes before failure.

I’m suspecting the CPU, what does anyone else think? It seems to me if it was a problem with the RAM that I would be seeing some error messages, instead of the laptop shutting down completely.

2

I have two Acer laptops here that need to be fixed, I have found that Acer is a Cheaply made laptop and they use low Quality parts.. there batteries and hard drives are no good.
first i would check the battery, then the hard drive..

3

I agree with ghostman since the battery sensor may be locking up the PC with a failed battery signal or the hard drive may be faulty.
Try removing the Hard Drive and run (Xbuntu Live CD) and See if it will boot and run with no hard drive, if it works ok, then the drive is the problem.
Also try running the PC with no battery installed just in case it has degraded cells.
By this I mean the system battery, not the cmos battery.
Battery first, then the hard drive test.