AAAAAAAAAA I think I broke my laptop
I opened up the bottom panel to access the RAM in order to check to see if I had an open slot, which it turned out I did. In the process I removed and reinserted the one and only RAM thingy, in order to be sure there was only one. Now the screen won’t light up when I start it, though it still boops at me when I plug in the power cord and the lights turn on and the fan and disk drive make noises as usual.
computer nerd followers please halp
The second thing, the second thing, is to re-insert the RAM block to make sure it is actually connected correctly. Before that, the first thing is to touch grounded metal – a water pipe or similar – to make sure you don’t kill the ram with static.
How will I know if I already did that? Should I keep the battery in while I do it?
If your PC is turned off (I hope to God it has been turned off – not sleep, not hibernate, turned off) every time you fiddled with the ram then removing the battery shouldn’t have been necessary.
If you’ve tried resocketing the ram and you still get the error, odds are very good that you’ve fucked something w/ static discharge.
I’m not totally sure if it’s off rather than hibernating bc I can’t easily check. Is taking the battery out a good course of action? Or at least one without risk of making things worse?
It is without risk.