TM 8204: Blinking Power Light

All,

I have had my TM 8204 for a while now, like it a lot. Recently however the power light has started to blink amber. The power LED is next to the battery LED on the front, and usually either off or on and green. Its not supposed to be amber or blinking.

I searched the user manual and the web, no explanation. I will write down exactly what happens:

- When waking up from sleep or running on battery, the power light suddenly starts to blink amber. I still have over 50% battery left, so it's not low on battery.

- The only way to get rid of the blinking is to restart the machine

- The machine seems to work OK otherwise

- Yesterday I got a BSOD (complete hard freeze) and the message said something about a driver

According to the manual, the power indicator (not to be confused with the battery indicator!) is either on or off. Its green. There is no mention of it blinking or changing color to amber.

BTW my battery LED is working normally.

Does anyone know what this means? Is it serious?

tx!

 

I've had my 8204 since February. I initially had what appears to be this same problem. The power indicator is amber when the unit is in standby. Initlally when i would try to put the machine into hibernate, the process would fail, the unit would stay on and the power LED would flash amber, indicating the failure. I wasn't sure what this was either, until i was at a cafe, put the unit into hibernate, put it into its bag and went home. I got home and took it out of the bag and was stunned to find the cooling fan screaming away trying to cool off this computer that stayed running in its bag.

It turned out that there was some kind of problem with Windows XP on dual core machines, not reliably going into hibernate. Read about it here. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909095

That patch is not available from Microsoft, but it is floating around out there. I installed it and the hibernate problem was solved. Never had the blinking light again.

 

Yes! That's exactly what I was seeing. I had forgotten that I tried to hibernate around that time - hibernate didn't work very well and I stopped trying it.

I downloaded the fix and now hibernate works and no blinking light.

Thanks a lot, Yellow11, you really helped me out here!

One somewhat unrelated question: Do you still get 3 hours battery life? Mine was 3 from the beginning, but now it's down to a solid 2 no matter what I do. Even with ATI set to "optimize battery life" and with display dimmed down all the way, battery shows 99% and 2:00 hours remaining - and it's pretty accurate too, definitely doesnt last longer than 2.

I don't know if this happened as a result of recent Windows auto-updates, software I installed, or just the battery giving out. I don't know when exactly it happened but it seems like the battery should last a bit longer than 8 months (April-December)...

 

Glad i could help.

RE: Battery life. At almost a year old i gan get 2:30 out of the battery writing in a cafe. I also remember that there was a Microsoft patch that addressed increased power consumption on machines with dual core processors with USB devices on (of which the orbicam is one), Have you found this one and applied it?

I think this is the one http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q918005

 

Yellow, thanks again, I had heard of the USB problem, but was unable to find this patch. Excellent. The battery is now at 83% and there's 2 hours remaining, which is definitely better than before - before it would be at 2:00 hours only at 97% and then drop below 2 rapidly after that. I can't help but think that a recent Windows patch made this much worse 'cause I have had the orbicam since the beginning and it didn't cause any problems then...

I am also getting the battery replaced - I made arrangements prior to the fix. It has a one year warranty so that should be no problem. I should be back up to my 3 hours in no time