~Toughbooktalk~

My MK5 is seriously misbehaving. It started once when I knocked it on concrete while it was working and it locked up. It was using an SSD so it's not a filesystem issue, plus I tried a different disk while troubleshooting. It is possible that something got knocked loose but a cursory check under the bottom panel showed nothing wrong. I may need some help to figure out what to disassemble and look for.

Now it is randomly locking up and the CAPSLOCK and SCROLL LOCK LEDs flash in unison. Anybody know what that means?

Also I removed the SODIMM in case I had bad memory, too.

kernel panic....something is loose.

dmesg or /var/log/xorg.0.log

eating hence no caps.

kode-niner wrote:.................... CAPSLOCK and SCROLL LOCK LEDs flash in unison......

.....

That does not sound good at all...

Have you tested it while plugged in or battery only?

Plugged in. It just locks up. No kernel panics and nothing gets logged.

Was the other disk a SSD or HDD?...
I suggest a standard IDE drive..eliminate the IDE to SATA adapter...
Check the battery connector board...

And the obvious, check the board the LEDs are on...

If none of these repair the problem, I would take a photo of the inside of the CF29 and examine the photo where you can enlarge it. It's easier to see the detail that way.

Do you have a DVD/CD drive? Boot a Linux live CD with NO SSD or HDD installed. No caddy

Colonel Panic? Wasn't he a character on the TV show Hogan's Heroes?

I tried everything. Live CD with internal drive and USB external drive, with or without SSD, IDE HDD, Linux OS, Windows 7 OS.

I am curious about the scroll and caps lock LEDs flashing regularly. It must be reporting a specific error condition. At any rate, I need to read up on motherboard diagrams and see where the various bits are connected to each other.

If I recall, those LED's are on a PCB that is separate from the motherboard with a cable connecting it. Check that cable and connections.
Does it get past the BIOS POST and load the OS?

Was the base cover damaged?
Check the motherboard and case for cracks..

No visible damage. This happened a few times, once when I was trying to re-install Linux, another time idling while running from the Knoppix live CD. Some other times it would happen when the OS was loaded from HDD/SSD.

I've scrounged around the net for the flashing scroll and caps lock symptom and other manufacturers sometimes report that as a memory problem. I'll check the connections leading up to the LEDs but a bad connection there would make more sense if the flashing was intermittent, not regular.

I have a MK5 with a buggy touch screen I really need to get rid of,works fine. Pay the shipping and you can have it.