Scroll lock and Caps Lock blinking on HGL30

[kjetilk]

Hi all!

I fear my old trusty HGL30 is about to draw its terminal breath It has actually been good enough for my purpose, so I gave it a new SSD late last year, had lots of trouble with that with broken firmware with Linux and stuff, but it has been running stably until recently.

Recently, the disk has not been detected by BIOS when I've taken it with me, and today, I also saw the Caps lock and Scroll lock LEDs blinking with the same period as it got into trouble as it froze when I used it. Blinkenlights are usually a Really Bad Sign in this era. Anyone here remember what this means?

I need to be able to tell if it is the SSD that is at fault (then I can return it) or if it something more serious... I have everything on that SSD backed up properly or under remote version control so I'm not worried about the data, but I was hoping the laptop would last a little longer.

[jimbob83]

The easiest way to check would be to try the SSD in another known working laptop. Note that there may be a risk of damaging the second laptop if the SSD is bad -- I've not heard of this happening with SSDs, but I recently came across a report of bad memory cards damaging cameras: SportsShooter.com - Dead Nikon D300 from a Compact Flash card????

[kjetilk]

Whooah, that thing about dead camera was scary. I have the old disk too, I could see if the laptop runs reliably with the old HDD first. It is a bit hard to tell, as the laptop has been running OK for a couple of weeks since the problem first started. Thanks anyway!

[katalin_2003]

Hello, kjetilk, most Alienware systems are build by Compal and they benefit from the same num scroll caps error codes feature.

Here's a list of the error codes:
Check for LED Behavior on Alienware M17x of M15x When a No Post Situation Is Suspected - KB Article - 367784 | Dell

Hope it helps.

[kjetilk]

I opened the harddrive closure, and saw that the SDD was barely in contact with the connectors. Turns out that the SDD is 3-4 mm shorter than the previous HDD, and so it could slide free of the connectors. I hadn't noticed this before, but now I stuffed some extra plastic in there and hope that will act as a cushion... :-) The SDD fortunately doesn't get nearly as hot as the HDD did, so it shouldn't be a problem.