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Recently noticed strange blinking of power LED on my desktop system, following a virus attack. I managed to clean everything up (or so I think) and upgraded my protection apps to prevent reinfection, but this blinking LED seems really curious.

It first began immediately after I had changed my power settings to allow standby since I tend to leave the system on at all times. When I first saw this it appeared only while system was in standby mode, and would go solid when I jiggled the trackball to 'juice' the system into operation.

I have since reset power settings to Always On, and now the LED blinks at all times - about 1.2 sec cycle, half on, half off. Other than this strange blinking, the system seems fully operational.

Anybody have any experience with this? Any idea where I'd find info about what this means?

Thanks in advance!

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Dani AI

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Short expert note for (and anyone else landing here years later): on the A7N8X-E the front-panel System Power LED (PLED) is supposed to light when the PC is on and blink when the board is in a sleep/standby state. The official ASUS A7N8X Deluxe manual documents the PLED behavior and the 3-1 PLED header location. A7N8X Deluxe User's Manual. (asus.com)

Practical checks (quick, low-risk):

  • Verify the front-panel connectors: confirm the case LED is on the 3-1 PLED pins (not swapped with IDE_LED). If PLED is plugged into the HDD LED header you will see blinking with disk activity instead of steady power. [Manual shows PLED vs IDE_LED]. (asus.com)
  • Observe the blink pattern: a steady slow blink consistent with sleep/standby is different from very fast or long 4s-on/4s-off patterns that some ASUS pages document as hardware/boot indicators. That helps tell “sleep vs error.” (servers.asus.com)
  • Isolate hardware: with the system off and unplugged, unplug the front-panel PLED wire—if blinking stops (or the case LED goes dark), the board is signaling something; if it continues, the behavior is internal to the board/power supply.
  • Double-check BIOS power/ACPI settings and the OS power profile (S1/S3 settings, “Power button” action). The manual explains how the ATX power switch and sleep modes interact. (asus.com)

Note: ’s cleaning and ’s follow-up show dust/thermal issues can coincide with odd behavior, but the most common, non-fault explanation on this board is simply that the board is in a sleep state (or the PLED/IDE_LED are swapped). If the blink persists after the connector and BIOS/OS checks, consider PM diagnostics (power supply +5VSB), but start with the connector and power settings first.

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Member Avatar for fortast

tb01,
Mine blinked too. I removed the fan form the processorkooler. Not the whole thing,
just the fan! With a vacuumcleaner and a small brush I removed a lot of dust.
After that, no more blinking.

Member Avatar for tb01

Hi fortast,

Thank you so very much for your response. I'd pretty much given up on expecting a reply, after all this time.

I usually dismantle and clean my systems annually, checking all connections and replacing the heatsink/CPU thermal compound, etc. I've even been known to soak -some- circuit boards to remove stubborn dust deposits which don't brush away (drying them thoroughly before placing back in service, of course!).

Broke my leg two years ago while away from home for (what became) 10 mos, and overlooked my 'housekeeping' far too long. I did notice recently the LED stopped blinking, about the time I blew out the CPU heat sink & fan with a fresh can of compressed air. I didn't connect the two events until seeing your post, and it sure makes sense.

Thanks again for the very helpful info! I'm putting the dismantle & cleaning op on my task list, right now. Besides, I'm planning to reuse this case (Antec 900) for a new build and will go ahead and transfer this mobo to another case.

Happy computing!
--Tom :)

Member Avatar for tb01

I usually dismantle and clean my systems annually...

Completed thorough cleaning w/reapplication of Arctic Silver-5 to CPU/heatsink two days ago!
--Tom

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