Sat, 03 May 2025 13:29:00 UTC
i plugged in and booted up a laptop today. the laptop is fairly unremarkable. its a Dell Latituide 5410. its running Windows 11. it is, in all regards, one of the laptops ever. there is nothing special about it aside from the fact that it is running windows. this normally wouldnt be special but it is my only system running windows at present, unless you want to count the windows 10 vm i keep in cryostasis.
i plugged in the laptop before trying anything because it had been sitting for a while and i probably left the battery pretty close to empty last time i used it. booted up the computer and it worked fine, except the light on the front of the system was blinking. four amber flashes, then a white flash, then a pause. repeat. okay cool, ill look up what the problem is. the documentation contains no information for blink codes involving four amber flashes, only one to three. typical.
no worries, ill just open it up and have a little looksie inside. dell actually did a good job with their latitude series laptops. probably because theyre targeted at businesses but whatever, we take anything we can get. just a few regular phillips screws, which are captive to prevent losing them. the cover pops right off with the gentle snap of some plastic clips that hold well but not too tightly - definitely the pride and joy of some engineer who will sadly never be recognized. i dont know why but my first thought for what could be wrong was the battery. i booted to setup because i know dell's setup program shows battery information and sure enough, battery not detected. i shut it back down and gave it a quick unplug replug. checked setup again and yep, working again. blink code gone, battery detected.
i know my tendency to jump straight to attempting repairs is far from normal but i wish more people would at least consider opening things up more often. i learned what i know by taking things apart and usually putting them back together. i find that people are generally pretty curious of whats inside things and how it works but theyre scared of breaking something or hurting themselves. people seem to really like when i have somehting open in front of them and explain how it does what it does, pointing at things and demonstrating mechanisms as i go. actually now that i think about it my sample group is definitely not representative of the general population. queer neurodivergent people tend to attract other queer neurodivergent people and that is definitely the type of groups i find myself in most. i do think my point still stands though.