Hmm, with surface mounted stuff there are lots of stories like this. I'm
assuming you are going to fix the cable, but before you do, give it a good
test, as what you describe may also be due to a poor joint and moving and
flexing stuff has simply made it good again for a while till corrosion and
or muck starts to affect it again. I hate those tiny flimsy connectors. It
was almost better in the bad old days where these ribbons simply plugged
into a tine type edge connector, as often there was enough cable to cut it
and shove it back in!

Brian

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The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

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Just to recap - Over past few weeks my W10 Acer laptop had more and more
frequently locked up, no mouse movement, no response to ctrl+ Alt + del,
only holding the power button down for ten seconds to reboot it brought it
back. Manually taking control of virtual memory and upping the amount,
seemed to fix it, it did, but not for long - so nothing else for it but to
open it up....

Nothing was socketed, apart from cables to accessories like the keyboard,
mouse pad, a USB + memory slot and wifi module. No socketed chips at all,
8Gb of ram, none socketed and no expansion slots.

I managed to break the socket clamp catch for the tape type ribbon cable
for the USB + memory socket, trying to work out how to release it - It was
a matter of easing the keyboard a little way, to begin reaching in to
unplug things, some had a catch clamp which pushed in, others like this
had a clamp which needed lifting 90 deg to release.

I dusted the entire PCB, case and air ducts out thoughroughly with a paint
brush, then reassembled it, with no expectation that the lockup was fixed.
The damaged socket I partially botched by using a bit of sweetie wrapper
to wedge it and apply contact pressure.

No more lockups in the several days since then, despite changing it back
to W10 default virtual memory management - that USB + memory socket has
power, but no data, so obviously the cable has pulled partially out/ not
making full contact, in my rush to get it back together.

My best guess as to the problem - maybe a bit of loose solder or
conductive dust shorter something out. The brushing cleared it out.