Hi,

A friend of mine has a ThinkPad R52 and has been having some problems for a while, such as a message saying the C drive is full, even though no media is stored on it...


Last week he asked me to have a look as it wouldn't boot up. It was showing the IBM start screen then going to a black screen and staying like it. I could hear the fan spinning but nothing else. I suspected a dead Hard Drive, so bought him a tested 2nd hand one


While waiting for it to turn up I turned it off and on and hit the Access IBM key to get into the BIOS - it worked then after turning it back off and on again we don't even get the IBM start screen - I didn't change anything in the BIOS while in it


Am I right in thinking the Motherboard has failed and needs replacing?

Is there anything I can try before delivering the bad news to him?


Thanks for any suggestions

Welcome to the forum!

That R52 sounds rather sick given your description, but you can give this old trick one last shot:

Remove the hard and media drives, unplug the battery and the AC adapter. Press the "power" button 10 times in a row holding it down 10 seconds each time, and 30 seconds the last time around.

Plug the AC adapter - but nothing else - back in and try to power on.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Hi, thanks for the welcome and reply

I've tried what you suggested and not a lot happened... The fan started to spint and the power light lit up, but nothing else. I was expecting it to complain about a lack of hard drive at least - I guess that's it dead then?

That doesn't sound good...

The best source for a replacement R52 (or any other ThinkPad motherboard) is this one:

http://www.theboardroom.info/

Good luck.