Acer won't shut down

[kuckunniwi]

Hi,

My Acer Aspire ES1-311 will not shut down, under any circumstance (Xubuntu Trusty amd64). It begins to shut down, then gets stuck either on the the Xubuntu logo, on three dots or on a black screen. When I bought the laptop over a year ago, this happened 2-3 of every 5 times. Now it's 5/5

shutdown -h now and shutdown -P now don't seem to make a difference.

I've also tried acpi=off and acpi=force in the appropriate line in etc/default/grub, blacklisting blacklist dw_dmac and dw_dmac_core (as suggested in one of he threads below), to no avail.

Wondering whether it might be a Xubuntus-specific issue, I backed up my docs and tried a fresh install (not a live session) of Ubuntu 15.04 (64-bit). No changes, same problem. So I got decided to go for a pro-active, no-BS approach and did fresh installs of Kubuntu (14.04, 14.10, 15.04, 15.10), Mint 17 (MATE, KDE) and Elementary OS Freya. Same thing (with varying degrees of out-of-the-box hardware detection too; sometimes the trackpad wasn't recognized, sometimes the wireless adapter, sometimes both).

So I reckoned it might be an *buntu issue, and tried Fedora, OpenSuse and Debian, (newest releases as of November '15). We're talking about at least 15 fresh installs using different distros. In some of these distros this error was present even in the live session; in others, live session was fine but issue appeared after a fresh install.

Based on these tests, I'm guessing this is a kernel-related issue. Could that be the case? Another user had reported that things worked well in Fedora until he updated the kernel, then the issue reappeared.

When I first bought the laptop a year ago I also tried backporting kernels, but since then, I'm guessing current stable kernels would/should have fixed the issue. Might an older kernel be the solution to my problem?

I've been asking around and trying everything I've found on the forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2252074 // http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183391 // http://askubuntu.com/questions/52489...el-e3-111-c0wa // http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2121288 ) for a year now, to no avail...

Could this be an Ubuntu 64-bit issue? Might installing a 32-bit OS make a difference? (Laptop is 1 year old, so 64-bit architecture is supported, of course)

Any ideas...? PLEASE...! I've pretty much exhausted all the possibilities I've found in the forums, near-and-far, as well as the boundaries of my technical know-how, and am getting pretty desperate here. I really don't fancy having to go back to MS Windows as my main OS on this machine (no such issue in Windows), but daily forced power-offs can't be good for the hard drive (in fact, I've had kernel panic errors preventing OS boot twice now, forcing me to format)...

I could REALLY use the expertise of someone more savvy than myself and would be immensely appreciative for any help provided--at least to confirm my suspicions (OS architecture, kernel, etc.) and point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance and sorry for the soliloquy

Edit: If I'm too vague in my description or more information is required to approach this particular issue, please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll be pleased to provide it; I don't expect someone else to solve this for me with no work on my behalf. Thanks!

[kuckunniwi]

Guys...I could really use some help...I've been literally asking around the forum for over a year....PLEASE, COMMUNITY, come to my rescue !!!

[yoshii]

My computer doesn't fully shut down either, but only AFTER I implemented anti-ACPI measures. But I have to use them because I have a buggy BIOS. I also disabled PNPBIOS, but I know from experience it's the ACPI stuff that relates to some of the hardware power. Sorry I can't help much. If I think of anything else I will come back and share it.

[kuckunniwi]

My computer doesn't fully shut down either, but only AFTER I implemented anti-ACPI measures. But I have to use them because I have a buggy BIOS. I also disabled PNPBIOS, but I know from experience it's the ACPI stuff that relates to some of the hardware power. Sorry I can't help much. If I think of anything else I will come back and share it.

Thanks !

[kuckunniwi]

Anyone out there...? PLEASE...?

[kuckunniwi]

Still no one?

[qamelian]

Aside from blacklisting dw_dmac, and dw_dmac_core, you might also need to add the following to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub:

intel_idle.max_cstate=1

That's what finally cleared up my issues with an Acer Aspire E5 E5-511.

[kuckunniwi]

Aside from blacklisting dw_dmac, and dw_dmac_core, you might also need to add the following to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub:

intel_idle.max_cstate=1

That's what finally cleared up my issues with an Acer Aspire E5 E5-511.

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried it (followed with update-grub, of course). Nothing has changed....any other ideas?

[qamelian]

Can't think of anything off the top of my head. Making that change and blacklisting dw__dmac and dw_dmac_core was all it took to fix the same problem for me.

[kuckunniwi]

Did a fresh install of Mint 17.3 Cinnamon. Installed wireless drivers and got touchpad to work (more or less) by adding psmouse.proto=bare to grub. Blacklisted dw_dmac and dw_dmac_core, added the intel_idle.max_cstate=1 to grub and no changes whatsoever.

Upgraded kernel to 4.2. No changes. Downgraded kernel to 3.13.0-45 > Now it shuts down correctly 1/2 of the time. Tried kernel 3.13.0-27, also 50/50. Might an older kerner be the solution to the problem?