"Amber light of death." That is how one frustrated "blogger" described the very same problem I was dealing with when my work laptop crashed before I was able to back up my hard drive. Sure, I have had computer problems before. And some of the ways I recovered from them would even impress Johnny 5 himself!
It was 6:45am on a SATURDAY morning and I went into the office to prepare for a conference call with the owner of my company and one of our Project Managers. I set up my laptop as I had done literally a thousand times before and NOTHING would come on. Sure I had my theories, and I was oddly calm about my chances for full power and most importantly full data recovery.
Upon arriving home, I went straight to GOOGLE and searched using keywords, DELL Laptop, Orange Light. I then found a message board for which I will always be grateful. My heroes at www.randomfix.com specifically at http://www.randomfix.com/2007/04/19/dell-dimension-%E2%80%93-flashing-orange-power-light/ had a thread that described my very problem. I was reading at the speed of Will Hunting and Johnny 5 combined , absorbing all of the "input." My heart then sank to the center of the earth when somebody actually called the problem the "Amber light of death." There it was, nearly two years of posts on this message board with people claiming 538 different possible solutions for the same problem, the "Amber light of death!" I don't know why I kept reading, but something told my the answer for me was out there. And sure enough, one of the most simple of remedies, remove the lithium battery, led to the end of four hours of flashing from the amber light of death. A few steps later, I was able to reinsert the battery and power on the laptop for the first tme that day.
I quickly backed up all my data and followed the additional steps to safely charge the battery back up and safely turn off and then power back on the laptop. Seven days later, I am amber light free!
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And Now, A Note From Brian Powell
13 years ago
