LED flashing with no power available >12hr

[anonymouse]

Question about my broken laptop:

How come the power LED keeps flashing when the only battery is 2 feet away from the laptop (to be explicit: the battery slot is empty), the power cord is unplugged from the laptop, using the power switch has no effect, and the top is down like I'm about to transport the laptop? Nothing's plugged into any port. No base station. Flashing isn't normal any other time. It's been flashing over 12 hrs so far (when I was home). Flashing is steady, rapid, and not dim. Other LEDs are all off, except I can't be sure about adjacent LED, which seems to be reflecting 1st LED's flashes. 2nd LED is for HDD, which, this time, I don't hear whirring. Sleep-whatever button has no effect.

Capacitance is key & LEDs drain very little, but this seems like a very long time. Does that mean something else is broken? like circuitry?

Broken laptop: Bootup failures, last 2 weeks. Usually power-up followed by black screen. Twice it got into Win splash screen, which froze at least once, then screen went black both times. Once it got far enough to complete RAM test, which it passed, but it froze just after that, and I cold-rebooted. Once screen goes black, nothing comes back. Prior to blacking, and prior to final freezing, nothing unusual seen, e.g., no antiviral alert, no abnormal display. I can usually hear HDD whirring. I don't think I feel P/S fan air, but I don't remember how strong that's supposed to feel (it pulls air out). No impacts pre-failure. Last full use had no anomalies that I don't usually experience. Booting from HDD or FDD makes no difference; can't test booting from CD since I don't remember which of my live CDs successfully booted laptop in past. External keyboard being plugged in or not makes no difference (I use one because some built-in keys suddenly stopped working months ago).

Compaq Armada 7800 model 6300/T/8000/V/0/1; Win98SE on HDD. Bootable floppy used was made from Compaq-supplied software for configuring setup; I don't remember what OS it has, but it has worked before. I'm the laptop's only user. AVG antiviral & ZoneAlarm are up to date & in use, except AVG version expired in mid of this failure period. Usually using WiFi at public access point. Looked inside; saw no obvious oddities (e.g., no chipmunks, Martians, or cookie crumbs).

Thanx.

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Nick

[Bofinn]

try holding the power button down for 5 seconds - basically it's a hardware reset.

[anonymouse]

I forgot about holding the button, and don't remember if the 7800 has that feature. I tried powering up and repeating the flashing-LED problem (which had finally stopped) but couldn't repeat it; it merely refused to boot, for which holding the button made no difference.

Another explanation for the LED flashing without an apparent power source occurred to me, as a possibility only: The BIOS/CMOS battery may have supplied power to the power LED if a circuit was broken and electricity was leaking to where it shouldn't have. Whatever the cause, it ultimately flashed for over 69 hours until it stopped completely, along the way the flash slowing from many times per second to one flash per about 5 seconds. If the BIOS/CMOS battery had nothing to do with it, I'm puzzled about where it found the power.

Thanx.

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Nick