Thinkpads Forum

Hey all,

Hoping someone out there that has repaired some Thinkpads can help me out a bit. I've had my X200 Thinkpad for a while now, probably about 5 years. All I've had to do is replace the battery a couple times and she's strived on wonderfully. Unfortunately, recently, the fan starting making some pretty loud noise -- kind of embarrassing in public places. So I decided to open up the laptop, clean out the fan, and lube it up a bit. The good news is that this worked, no more fan noise! The bad news is, my laptop now doesn't work. What will happen is I power on the device, the power light comes on and the 'lock' lights will flash, the fan starts. About 3 seconds later, the fan stops and the power light goes out. About 10 seconds after that, the same thing happens, except this time the power light stays on (fan still stops). If I leave it sitting for about 30-60 seconds, the fan will start back up again and keep going. During all this, the screen does not display anything and I get no beeps. A NEW symptom I have -- after leaving the laptop sitting in this state overnight (I heard some folks with a somewhat similar problem just had it take forever to start up), the battery DID drain out (and the heatsink got warm, indicating to me something was running), however now if I have the battery in and the power adapter plugged in, the battery light flashes red amber. Mind you, the battery has been fine prior to this -- held charge great, ~3-4 hours, and charged up fine.

Things I have tried:
1) Various sticks of RAM in various configurations
2) No hard drive, WiFi card, basically any support device I could remove
3) Connecting to an external monitor
4) Trying to run it with the motherboard outside of the case
5) Disconnecting/reconnecting things multiple times
6) Screaming in frustrating

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Suspicious at this point that I hosed the motherboard, particularly the power components, while I was attempting to clean the fan.

A bit obvious but have you tried resetting your BIOS to default configuration?

It sounds like anything might be worth a try at this point for you. There is another possibility that you may have inadvertently introduced an electrostatic discharge (static electricity) into the motherboard during your disassembly and/or reassembly. Another possibility could be that your fan might be malfunctioning according to the sensors on the X200. Not sure if any diagnostic message would be displayed onscreen for a malfunctioning fan though.

How do you normally clean your fan? Do you blast it with compressed air?

I did attempt to clear the CMOS (and I assume in the process clear the BIOS), both through holding the power button down for a period of time and by removing the CMOS battery for a period of time (~30 minutes, found that recommended in some Lenovo support docs).

I would be surprised if it is the fan reporting wrong, given that at some point in the process the fan comes on and stays on. I would think if the fan was the issue, it just plain wouldn't stay on. But I don't know much about this sort of thing I have made the mistake of using compressed air without holding the fan in the past, now I open up the laptop enough to hold it still while cleaning.

Hmmm... that is strange. I have experienced something similar after a disassembly to replace a component as well. After a frantic PM for advice/help to a member here it just started working normally again after a short while. I did wonder what had just happened but I was more glad than anything that my school laptop was functioning again!

It looks like you went through a pretty thorough process of elimination as well in reference to your 'Things I have tried' list. I am pretty much out of ideas as well and you may have tried this already but have you gone through the cycle of:

1) removing the battery and AC from the X200
2) pushing the power button 10X followed by
3) holding the power button down for 10 sec
4) repeat this cycle for at least 3X
5) put your battery back in and cross your fingers

If that does not work then I would say that your motherboard is throwing the worst tantrum ever. I may not respond back for awhile as I have a final exam today that I am reviewing for. Best of luck to you! Oh and if you do get it working please post a solution here in your thread.

Good luck

I will try that when I get home. I've tried various incarnations of it already Hold for 1 seconds, 10 times, then hold for 30 seconds. Hold for 60 seconds. Hold for 15 seconds. Lol, no luck with any of them so far.

Sorry to hear of your trouble.

One thing I would look for is that the USB ports look normal and not creating a short to the case or the metal can the port is in.

Brad

Nothing seems to be touching. I've also tried running it with the motherboard almost out of the case.

I realize this thread is a bit dead, but I'm in need of a laptop again and was just playing with my ThinkPad last night. Still experiencing the same issues -- I was considering buying a new motherboard, but not sure the price is worth it. I figured I'd bump one more time and see if anyone has any other ideas before I just dump the laptop for a new one.

Thanks!

When you cleaned the fan, did you also properly replace the thermal paste?
Did you plug the fan and CMOS cables back in correctly, i.e. not force them in the wrong way around?
When you remove HD and RAM, does the laptop beep 1-3-3-1?

PS: If you have given up all hope, I have an X200 coming up for sale.
PM me if interested.

I was pretty careful when removing everything and putting it back on. I also did remove the thermal paste with some rubbing alcohol and replaced it with Arctic Silver. I get absolutely no beeping at all, which makes me think it is probably a motherboard issue.