HELP laptop froze with power on black screen and flashing lights

[kifla49]

Hi I have the HP pavillion dv 7-3162nr notebook. When I turned it on all the lights went on but the screen was completely black. To add, the the caps lock and num lock started blinking every 3 secends.I have no idea why my laptop was doing that, but pls pls pls HELP all my essays and valuable info r on the laptop. I'm dead without it!!!!! Thanks!

[DavidPK · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Try a Hard Reset as follows.

Shut down the notebook, unplug the AC Adapter and then remove the battery.  Hold  down the Power button for 30 seconds.  Re-insert the battery, plug in the AC Adapter and see if the notebook will start.

If the above doesn't help, see if you can match the sequence of Led 'blinks' to those shown in the table below.

Regards,

DP-K

[kifla49]

Is this safe??? Wouldn't it delete all the files?

[DavidPK]

Hi,

It's not a Factory Reset - it just discharges residual current in the Motherboard which can cause the issue you describe - your Hard Drive, files etc are not affected in any way.

Regards,

DP-K.

[feroxlara]

Hi, a question for the tech support.

I had the same problem, but my solution ended up having to remove a faulty RAM stick. Luckily I had two, one of which was a 2GB stick and the one that went bad was 1 GB. Whenever that faulty stick was in the laptop the system would not boot.

The problem is now solved after removing the faulty 1GB RAM stick.

Anyway, I was just wondering about a RAM stick that goes bad in such a fashion.

First question is, How do they just go bad like that?

Second question, can they be fixed at all or are the RAM sticks just trash after that?