Blinking Caps Lock and Scroll Lock when booting

Question

Dell Inspiron E1705 Windows XP So here's the story... I used it pretty much daily and never had any issues. I was using it one day and the turned it off when I left the house. When I returned and hit the power button to turn it on the following happened... { The power light lit up- indicating that it was plugged in. The Number Lock light light up and remained lit. The Caps Lock light began to blink. The Scroll Lock light began to blink. -The Caps Lock and Scroll lock blink in synchronization. I could hear the hard drive start up. All of the above continues for about 42 seconds. After that everything just turns off. } I have no idea what the problem is, how to diagnose it, or how to fix it. I'm hoping that the combination of blinking/non-blinking lights may point to a specific problem but have been unable to find the meaning of this or if there is indeed a meaning at all. There is no visible damage that my untrained eye can detect. Thank you for your help and suggestions.

ejn63 · Answer

Unfortunately, the flash code is telling you the system board is faulty.

deacsoft · Answer

So I need to replace the mother board?

ejn63 · Answer

Last-ditch effort: reseat the RAM. If it still won't power up, yes, the mainboard is faulty and will need replacement. It's not an inexpensive part to replace.

goyall · Answer

Hi

I have a 2 year old Inspiron with exactly the same set of problems (flashing Caps lock and Scroll lock on pressing the power button)..

was working perfectly fine till about 5 days ago but now it won't boot and nothing happens..

I am living in India and the cost of replacing a faulty mainboard is prohibitively high..

Can i open the base of the laptop myself and try to reseat the mainboard?

As it is...I have run out of warranty..

Regards,

Lalit.

Ghostknife78 · Answer

I have a Dell Latitude d620 and it was doing the same thing so i bought a motherboard and installed it and it is still wont boot. Number lock light is solid and the cap and scroll lock lights blink for about 30 seconds and stop. There no hard drive sound or anything.

ejn63 · Answer

Remove the RAM from the system.  If you don't get a series of beeps, the board is faulty.

Ghostknife78 · Answer

Last night is when I actually replaced the motherboard which I was getting all three lights solid. The board I bought off ebay is what I installed and when I started having this different issue I used the ddr2 memory from my other laptop and nothing happened. I hope I haven't been screwed on this new motherboard because it did say 'as Is'

Ghostknife78 · Answer

I've done that last night and besides it is not going into POST so the prosessor isn't even used at the intial boot.

ejn63 · Answer

This is a processor error.  Make sure the CPU is fully seated and locked down.

Delltechhelper · Answer

hey. i have a Dell latitude d620. i found out that the system cant run on 2 different types of RAM. i just swaped the rm and i worked fine.

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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