Thinkpads Forum

I attempted a bios update on my T420s last week which was unsuccessful. I didn't think anything of it at the time, until later that evening after my computer had gone to sleep and I opened the lid to wake it up to do some work. Nothing. The light above the LCD (that white LED for working in the dark) blinks once, the fingerprint reader LED flashes once, I hear a click, and that's it. A few seconds later, it repeats this sequence.

I've tried a few suggestions I've found while scouring online for a solution... unplug the battery from the board for 24hrs, take out RAM and boot (which successfully causes a beeping alarm on boot due to lack of memory of course), etc. No change...

Any solutions out there besides replacing the motherboard?

Appreciate the help!

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry for your trouble.

If your T420s has warranty remaining I suggest calling for service.

Brad

If you're out of warranty, contact this seller on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fix-Reset-Lenov ... 0851236024
He can make you a T420s BIOS chip, to replace your bricked one. You will need good soldering skills and have an iron with a very fine tip (or know someone who has both).
I have bought stuff off this guy, he's good and reliable.

You might be able to do a "crisis recovery". Go to this post http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=100330 and scroll down a bit.

This might be a wild guess, but the click noise you are experiencing might be an indication of a hard drive problem. Try pulling the hard drive to see if the machine will boot successfully.

Majestic wrote:This might be a wild guess, but the click noise you are experiencing might be an indication of a hard drive problem. Try pulling the hard drive to see if the machine will boot successfully.

That was my first reaction, as my heart sank deep into my chest... of course I hadn't done a full backup for a few weeks!

I confirmed that the HDD was ok, I pulled it out and put it in my wife's thinkpad.. thankfully, it booted just fine and I was able to access its contents just fine.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Unfortunately, warranty ran out May 2012.

twistero wrote:You might be able to do a "crisis recovery". Go to this post http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=100330 and scroll down a bit.

Thanks, I'll give this a whirl tonight.