When a Dell laptop encounters a hardware problem, it may blink its LEDs in a certain pattern, which indicates where the fault lies.
Dell Latitude 2017-2023
The battery charge LED will blink X times in amber (orange) colour, then Y times in white.
| X , Y | FAULT |
|---|---|
| 2 , 1 | CPU |
| 2 , 2 | Motherboard BIOS/ROM error |
| 2 , 3 | No RAM detected |
| 2 , 4 | RAM failure |
| 2 , 5 | invalid RAM |
| 2 , 6 | motherboard Chipset error |
| 2 , 7 | LCD failure |
| 2 , 8 | LCD power rail failure |
| 3 , 1 | RTC/CMOS battery |
| 3 , 2 | PCI or graphics/video card |
| 3 , 3 | BIOS recovery image not found |
| 3 , 4 | BIOS recovery image invalid |
| 3 , 5 | Power rail failure |
| 3 , 6 | SBIOS flash corruption |
| 3 , 7 | ME error |
Latitude 2015-2017
Same blink codes as above, but it’s the Power button LED which flashes.
Latitude E-series (2008-2016)
These older models have 3 LEDs (HDD,Battery & WiFi) , which either blink or stay on ‘solid’:
| HDD | Batt | WiFi | Fault |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blink | Solid | Solid | possible processor failure |
| Solid | Blink | Solid | RAM detected but error encountered |
| Blink | Blink | Blink | system board failure |
| Blink | Blink | Solid | graphics card |
| Blink | Blink | OFF | Hard drive initialisation / option ROM initialisation |
| Blink | OFF | Blink | USB controller |
| Solid | Blink | Blink | No RAM detected |
| Blink | Solid | Blink | LCD initialisation |
| OFF | Blink | Blink | modem |
| OFF | Blink | OFF | RAM unsupported or failed to initialise |