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2210
Latitude won't boot, blinking LED, trackpad freezes, or boots and soon stops
I bought a used/cheap Latitude with my volunteer discount at an electronics recycler. They don't let anything with Windows out the door, so I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 and have had it nearly a year.
Now it's acting funny:
(1) Will boot successfully and work normally for 5-15 minutes and then stop, and will not complete reboot: upon reboot, center LED blinks for several seconds and then shuts down and then requires a long rest (I wait until the following day) before it MIGHT boot and work for 5-15 minutes).
OR
(2) Will boot successfully and trackpad freezes and the only thing I can do is shut it down. Then a reboot gives a blinking LED and shutdown as described in (1).
Tech support where I bought it says they found and removed a bad stick of RAM but above problem not resolved; they think it might be memory controller and unfixable.
I live on a shoestring and have very little money for fixing or replacing this laptop. I'm not a techie and have NO laptop tech experience. Any suggestions - the more affordable the better - would be appreciated.
canby
3 Posts
0
April 20th, 2010 15:00
UPDATE and suggestion:
I found a thread elsewhere with many replies...one suggestion was to hold down F7 and F8 while powering up. If this works, it suggests a likely bad solder connection on your BIOS chip which is located below F7 and F8.
This worked for me with several consecutive reboots and no failures.
One remaining problem: trackpad often freezes after successful boot; I don't know why this is happening or how to resolve it.
Here's the relevant suggestion:
"Try this. Press down hard on the f7 and f8 keys while trying to turn it on. Some if it does turn on then odds are that the solder joints on the bios chip (which is below the f7/f8 keys) are bad. You can try to touch it up yourself, but it is not an easy job.
As far as I can tell the d600/600m have this issue a lot."
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