Caps lock blinks on startup with HP Compaq 6735S notebook

[madder]

I have the notebook mentioned above. When I took it on, the thing rarely booted up and gave several blinks at caps lock when attempting to boot.
I replaced a faulty power supply, and a dead battery, and I formatted the Windows Vista OS and replaced it with Windows 7 Ultimate.
I updated BIOS etc.
Now the laptop works much better. However, on startup, caps lock blinks once, and the the notebook boots as normal. It usually works fine, but 20% of the time, at least, it may knock off. Usually when I press the power button a few minutes later, system resume brings it back to where it was.

Anyone know what it needs? A hard reset maybe? Because if it was CPU failure, I doubt it would power on at all?

 

[wingcoax]

It's not only notebooks. My desktop does it as well as my laptop.

 

[madder]

In my own case, HP have a list of startup blink error reports, and 1 blink has been mentioned as CPU failure, but as far as I can tell, that is only when the machine won't boot. My machine boots up 99.9% of the time.

Just tried a hard reset to see if it makes any difference.

So, then started up, and the same thing happens. I paid close attention this time. Caps lock blinks once when the HP logo appears and then again, once, when the starting windows logo appears. Notebook boots fine almost every time, but it might knock off after a while.

 

[CylonRaider]

Easiest way to test hardware issues is to boot from a "Live CD/DVD/USB"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD

 

[wingcoax]

Mine do it on all three lock buttons.

 

[madder]

Thanks for the replies. I took the whole laptop apart yesterday, and I mean completely. Then I tool my Dyson Vacuum cleaner to the motherboard and fan. No, really.

Put it back together again, and it not only runs well now without crashing out, but it runs very quietly also.

All in, it took me about 40 minutes to do it.