XO Troubleshooting Guide

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HowTo [ID# 144832]  +/-

This is a troubleshooting guide for the XO laptop. It is for troubleshooting production XO laptops running firmware version Q2D03 or greater.

Still very much a work in progress!! Feel free to add

Problems powering on

If you are having problems getting the XO to power on, see Troubleshooting Power On.

Display problems

If you are having problems with the display on an XO laptop, see the Display diagnosis section.

Power and Battery problems

See the Power and Battery diagnosis section if you are having problems such as:

• the battery is not charging
• the battery is suddenly loosing charge
• the laptop won't run from a power adapter

Audio and Camera problems

If you are having problems with the audio (microphone, speakers, headphones, or microphone input) or camera on an XO laptop, see the AV diagnosis section.

Keyboard and Touchpad problems

If you are having problems with the keyboard or touchpad on an XO laptop, see the Keyboard diagnosis section.

USB problems

If you are having problems with the USB interfaces on an XO laptop, see the USB diagnosis section.

Debugging Procedures

The following are common debugging and test procedures:

• Rebooting the Embedded Controller - This completely resets a laptop
• A Hardware Self-Test is included in the XO laptop.
• Boot options - Different boot options are available through pressing buttons around the screen during the initial boot process (immediately after pressing the power button). A sampling (more at Cheat codes):
  • '✓' (check) game pad key: forces a more detailed display while booting. See Troubleshooting Power-On for more details. This is useful for debugging activation problems.
  • 'O' game pad key: alternate between the current boot image and a previous one. In laptops which have never been upgraded, there is no previous boot image to use.
  • Rocker left: invoke hardware self-test.

Repair Procedures

The following are common repair procedures:

• Disassembly Guide
  • Getting at the display and motherboard
  • Replacing a keyboard/touchpad
  • Guide to screws
• Motherboard Guides: intro, or repair
• Getting a developer key for a laptop
• Turning an XO into a serial terminal
• Finding and fixing bad blocks of NAND Flash
• Replacing the EC Flash - Replacing the Embedded Controller Flash
• Fixing an RTC problem - Fix laptops which can't boot due to reset RTC time.
• Fixing LiFePO4 batteries that stop charging
• A detailed description of the laptop power circuitry