I'm at a complete loss...

[aconfusedman]

About a week ago my HP Elitebook 8540p stopped working. When I powered it on, all the LED's would come on normally, but the screen would stay dark then the caps lock and num lock LED's would blink 3 times.

After doing some research I figured out it 3 blinks is a memory module problem so I got a new stick of 4gb memory (off ebay, from some no name cheap manufacture) and installed it in the RAM slot (on the bottom of the laptop)... The lights still blinked 3 times. Okay, no problem, I had two sticks in the thing anyways, so maybe the one on the motherboard is bad and I will just put the one from the back in the motherboard slot. I did this, still blinked 3 times, I tried to swap every possible combination I could thing of, e.g. putting the original RAM 1 at a time in both slots, putting both in on different slots, use the new ram only, etc, etc...

Over and over again it does the same thing, turns on and the LED's blink 3 times. Fan still works, power light and everything is normal, just a blank screen.

I'm at a complete loss on what to do at this point. I don't have a warranty on the thing. The odds of 2 perfectly working RAM sticks just failing have to be 1 in a billion, and even then, the new one didn't work either. My second guess is maybe its the RAM slots? Well that one is automatically out of the door because I tried leaving RAM in either slot (motherboard and/or bottom of laptop)

The third guess was maybe it's the motherboard itself? Well turns out if the motherboard fails the num lock and caps lock blink 5 times. So it can't be that because I only get 3 blinks...

Really, I'm at a complete loss of ideas on what's going on anyone have a clue?

[aconfusedman]

Not a single soul might know whats wrong?

God I'm the most unlucky person on this planet, I always get the unexplainable problems with this stuff

I just got another new ram stick today, the same kind that was in the notebook originally and it still did the same thing despite trying it in both slots.

[Sotton]

are you sure with the warranty? It depends on the number so you need nothing but the number. Check it here

https://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/si...public/wc/home

[brehidran]

If you have an elitebook, HP's customer service is supposed to be REALLY good for their business line of notebooks. I would give them a call, and tell them exactly what you told us here - 3 blinks, suspect RAM.

Make sure you bought the correct type of RAM - DDR3 and correct clock speeds. Also make sure you bought good RAM - I usually don't buy from no-names on ebay, but perhaps your RAM is fine.

[aconfusedman]

are you sure with the warranty? It depends on the number so you need nothing but the number. Check it here

https://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/si...public/wc/home

I already did, unfortunately the warranty expired.

[aconfusedman]

If you have an elitebook, HP's customer service is supposed to be REALLY good for their business line of notebooks. I would give them a call, and tell them exactly what you told us here - 3 blinks, suspect RAM.

Make sure you bought the correct type of RAM - DDR3 and correct clock speeds. Also make sure you bought good RAM - I usually don't buy from no-names on ebay, but perhaps your RAM is fine.

They did the only thing they could, they asked for the S/N, etc... And determined there was no warranty on the computer. In addition, I did explain exactly what happened and the only thing I got out of them was that I needed to buy HP approved RAM (which I did today, and still didn't work)

Another thing he mentioned is it might not be the ram at all, but instead, might be the slots the RAM goes into. I tried both slots with the new RAM and don't see how two slots can fail at the same time unless its the motherboard failing completely, at which point, the blink sequence should be 5 blinks instead of 3.

[Sotton]

I already did, unfortunately the warranty expired.

can you explain why? 3 years warranty is normal as far as I know and the 8540p is from 2010, so 1 year left?

sorry for asking, I am just curious

(because it seems not to help you if HP already refused your warranty wishes...)

[aconfusedman]

can you explain why? 3 years warranty is normal as far as I know and the 8540p is from 2010, so 1 year left?

sorry for asking, I am just curious

(because it seems not to help you if HP already refused your warranty wishes...)

I really don't know... I talked to HP and they said I had no warranty, either way... I'm not here to talk about my warranty, if I was concerned about my warranty I would have talked about that, but instead, I'm talking about having a technical issue and hoping someone here has either seen it before and dealt with it.

I don't mean to be rude, but every time someone starts talking about warranty in a technical help thread that either means a) they have no clue how to fix it, b) they know its beyond repair, or c) they are trying to help but don't know how.

I really do appreciate you taking the time to try and help me, but a warranty is not going to help if I don't have one. Now, do you know why the computer would be acting this way?

[Sotton]

I guess, you already know the answer by now: your computer is broken beyond self repair (for normal users). Since you have no warranty I suggest a local repair shop? Maybe for a few bucks you get an estimate of costs.

[Indrek]

One thing you could do, if you have access to another laptop that uses DDR3 RAM, is take the original RAM modules (plus the ones you've bought) and test them in another laptop (run Memtest86+ for a couple of hours). If they come out OK, this would at least confirm that the problem is with the computer itself, not the RAM. At that point your only options would be to take it to a local repair shop, like Sotton suggested, or try buying a new motherboard from eBay.


(I'm also a bit curious how warranty can be expired on a laptop that comes standard with 3-year warranty and can't be 3 years old yet. Aren't you in the least bit concerned that there might have been a mixup or something? Especially since HP said your warranty is expired, not invalid. Because if you do still have warranty, which by all accounts you should, then you wouldn't need to spend your own time and money on troubleshooting and fixing this problem. Alternatively, if there is a legitimate reason for your warranty being terminated early, then you'd be doing the rest of the community a favour by finding out what that reason is and posting it here, because it might affect the rest of us EliteBook users as well.)