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My Dell XPS 15 laptop has an SSD. As far as I know it has only 2 moving parts besides buttons, the hinge and the fan.

I dropped it on concrete while it was in sleep mode. On opening the lid, the login screen showed. The touchpad responded for about 2 seconds and then it all froze. Tab, space, enter, volume and brightness keys all had no effect.

The unexpected (to me) behavior is that I restarted it via the power button, and it booted up normally. It does not normally freeze on wake from sleep.

What could cause this behavior? My understanding of computers is that if a mechanical shock is sufficient to disrupt operations immediately, that is because somewhere some electrical conductor in the machine has broken. That should permanently disrupt operations, not temporarily. What am I missing?

thechimp
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While you have no moving parts that would affect the usage of the computer, a strong enough physical shock can still cause issues. As @Mokubai mentioned in his comment, many connectors are spring loaded, meaning they use pressure to maintain contact. A shock could temporarily disconnect the connectors. This can also happen if the motherboard flexed in the drop. Even a small enough twist could separate contact points and break the circuit. Another issue, although less common on new hardware, is that a shock could break solder joints. Broken solder joints are fixable, if found.

If your laptop is working normally, then you probably are fine and just had a one-time issue. If you see irregular behavior in the future, you might want to have the laptop checked.

Keltari
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