Laptop has trouble booting up following fall

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Alright. This is a strange issue and there are quite a lot of things to say about it, so please read my post in its entirety before answering.

The laptop in question - an Acer laptop running Windows 10 - sustained a fall a few days ago. Following the fall, when powered on, the keyboard would light up and, a short time after, the fan would start. Then, the computer would turn off by itself, then turn on again. This process would repeat a few times; eventually, either it would just end with the computer turning off and not turning back on, or... well, sometimes, the computer would end up booting correctly and would then run perfectly fine. The only problem I could find was that, when woken up from sleep, it would stay frozen at an unlit screen (not a lit screen displaying only black pixels) with the fan wheezing. I'd then have to hold the power button to turn it off, start it back up and, once again, go through it repeatedly turning on, staying frozen, and turning off.

While I had it running, I tried a variety of things to fix the laptop. I changed parameters in the Control Panel as recommended by countless forum posts. I also reinstalled the BIOS and ran built-in troubleshooting utilities. Nothing changed.

During this period, I also noticed another odd detail. When turned off, if the laptop was plugged in, it would keep turning on by itself.

Eventually, the laptop stayed on its turn on/turn off cycle noticeably longer and then just stayed off; pressing the power button would do nothing, same went for plugging it in. I found a video which said to try draining a possible static charge by removing the battery and holding the power button down. I did it, and it worked: it was back to its previous defective state. Then, about a day later, this second issue occured again. I tried to drain it once more.

This is the point at which I am now. The power button still does not turn the laptop on, but it can turn the laptop off - I know this because it will now turn on when plugged in again. But it's not possible to get it running properly anymore. The laptop will just stay stuck with an unlit screen, with the keyboard lit up and the fan at full power. It won't even turn off by itself anymore.

I have opened the laptop up, and am unable to see any kind of obvious damage which could cause this. I have also tried to clean up the dust inside. I know the problem is not just the screen because the keyboard stays unresponsive, too (I cannot, for instance, disable its lighting).

Wow. That's a lot of text, sorry... Well, thank you in advance for any help in dealing with this problem.
 
g'day and welcome to the forum. :)

I've got nothing but bad news for you....

the laptop has suffered damage from the fall and no amount of tweaking the settings will change that.
it has something (and therein lies the issue) faulty inside, that needs to be identified and hopefully replaced.

was the laptop on when it was dropped?
what sort of drop are we talking- height?, onto what surface?
is the drive a HDD or SSD?
laptop still under warranty at all?
age of laptop?

when you say you have pulled it apart, do you mean you have removed the back plate, or have you dug deeper and removed the keyboard, processor, drives, and all the various circuit boards for power, trackpad, and any other sundry bits?
 
Thank you very much for your quick answer! I should probably mention that since my initial post, I realized it was still possible for me to trigger the laptop's faulty-but-sometimes-running-properly state by plugging it in and then quickly unplugging it to turn it on a first time.

Anyways, to answer your questions:
I believe the laptop was on when it fell; I'd say it was a fall of about 40 to 50 centimeters. It is equipped only with an SSD, and is about three years old. It is no longer under warranty, sadly.

I have removed the back plate. I considered removing the main board but, as some parts of it are quite tightly inside/against other parts of the laptop, I was afraid of breaking it and figured I'd better ask about my issue first.
 
phew - I was afraid you may have said that you stripped the innards out totally.
you were right to stop when you did - it's never a bad thing to know one's limitations.

good news on the SSD front. if it was a HDD and dropped while running, you'd most likely be looking at a faulty drive.
you can always put that SSD into an external caddy and have access to your data - if things don't go well with getting the laptop going.

which brings me nicely to the big problem - what is wrong with the laptop?
sadly, it will be hardware, what exactly I cannot say.
but I do recommend taking it to a professional, they have all the right tools, skin in the game, and will nut out the cause faster than you, or us, trying this, trying that etc.
yes, sadly, it comes at a cost, no way around that unless you know someone, qualified, who can look at it for you.

at only three years old, I'd be guessing it'll be worth spending about $100 (couples hours of work) for someone to tell you what's the problem.
as to cost to fix - who knows! :)
 
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