I recently had a RAM slot in my laptop fail. Initially, I had two 4GB sticks, but I decided to replace one with a 16GB stick since the manual states it can handle 16GB in each slot. I made sure that the new RAM has the same timing and speed as the old ones. However, when I installed the new RAM and powered on the laptop, the Caps Lock key started flashing in a pattern of three long flashes followed by two short ones. Does anyone know why this is happening?
3 Answers
It sounds like the 3 long, 2 short caps lock flashes indicate a memory failure. Try reseating the RAM carefully. Make sure the laptop is completely powered off before you do this to avoid any risk of shorting out components. If that doesn't work, try removing the new 16GB stick and putting back the original 4GB stick to see if that allows the laptop to boot. If it does, you might have a compatibility or faulty issue with the new RAM.
You might want to reset the laptop by removing the battery and draining the capacitors. To do this, hold down the power button for about 10 seconds after unplugging it. This can reset any lingering settings that might be causing the issue. After doing that, plug everything back in and check if you can access the BIOS settings. If you can, make sure to save any changes and check for a BIOS update that might help with the RAM compatibility.
The flashing caps lock can really be annoying. If reseating the RAM and resetting the laptop doesn’t work, it’s possible that the 16GB stick could be faulty or just incompatible with your laptop. Sometimes newer RAM sticks have compatibility issues with older systems, even if they match in speed and timings. If your system works fine with the old stick, I’d definitely look into that.
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