Fixing an Asus Memopad 7 that wouldn’t power on

Last Updated on December 12, 2015 by Dave Farquhar

One night my son ran down the battery on his Memopad 7 and put it away, but didn’t put it on the charger or tell me about it. The next time he went to use it, it was dead.

I tried several different tricks I found online, including plugging it in overnight to the AC adapter, plugging it in overnight to a computer’s USB port, and holding down the power button for a full minute or even a full five minutes. None of it worked–the unit just wouldn’t power on or show any signs of life whatsoever.

Finally I resigned myself to the possibility I would have to send it in for service. So I contacted Asus Technical Support and started a live chat. After a minute or two, a representative named Garfield R. (maybe not his real name, but we’ll go with it) came on and asked how he could help. I told him the symptoms, and after asking me a few questions, he suggested I plug the device in, then hold down the volume down button and power button at the same time for 10 seconds.

The tablet didn’t respond, so we started getting ready to do an RMA, but after a few minutes I saw something flash on its screen unexpectedly. It looked like a battery indicator. I walked back to the tablet, hit the power button, and again saw the battery indicator. I asked Garfield if this was a good sign. Before he was able to answer, the tablet managed to boot up and display the lock screen.

I opened the lock screen, and the battery indicator said 1%, so clearly when I’d plugged it in overnight, the tablet was in too deep of a sleep to charge. But holding down those two buttons woke it up enough to finally accept the charge.

I’ve never seen this fix documented anywhere–I know I sure searched for it–so I wanted to go ahead and share it here.

If that doesn’t work for you, here’s a more time-consuming solution.

I’m pretty sure that will work, but if it doesn’t, open a support case with Asus. I’ve only had to use their customer support twice since 1997, but it took less than 15 minutes to get that Memopad going again. I can’t complain about that.

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4 thoughts on “Fixing an Asus Memopad 7 that wouldn’t power on

  • June 13, 2014 at 8:40 am
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    Interesting. My wife got a brand new HTC One Max smart phone yesterday, and was having trouble connecting to our home wifi. I contacted HTC support and they had me do the same key sequence. It brought up a menu of choices (Restore, etc). Must be an android thing.

    • June 13, 2014 at 10:36 pm
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      Sure. As you can probably guess, I don’t like it, for a couple of reasons. I’ll work it in this week.

  • June 13, 2014 at 10:19 pm
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    Come to think of it, I think that’s the recovery sequence for Samsung phones too. Could be that’s the special thing to remember for Android, like Ctrl-Alt-Del on a PC.

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