t60P blackscreen on battery after BIOS Update 'failure'

[KDeering]

Running WinXP and just recently did a System Update that put all my drivers current.
Install History states that BIOS Update (2.09-1.07) "Installation failed' but when I reran the BIOS Update by itself it reports that the BIOS is up to date.

I was using the T60p on a plane when I closed the lid to get up. When I opened it again the lights lit up and it appeared to come out of standby but the screen stayed dark.

When I run on AC all is fine. Booting on battery, all is well until XP loads my personal setting, screen goes dark.

I can sometimes see part of a window if I hit Fn-F3 but not consistently.

Unplugging the AC also causes the screen to blank out.

[Lazarus]

I'm not sure this has anything to do with your BIOS update (failing).
It sounds much more like a hardware issue, most likely APM related.

Did you boot XP into safe mode and check the error logs?

If the system is still under warranty, then I'd make a claim about it with EzServe.

I once had a "blank error" situation like yours and that turned out to be an issue with the HAL, and was due to me moving the system from one HW platform to another.
But you normally would get a BoD with that, so I recon its your display adapter going astray.

That this is happening when you pull the plug is interesting.
Try changing the BIOS APM settings to disable all power saving settings and see if that disables the blank screen when you pull the plug.

You might also try to update the BIOS again from a bottable disk or CD.
You can download the image from Lenovo's web site.

[KDeering]

Disabling BIOS APM at least got me my wallpaper while XP started but then still a black screen. No change to unplugging behavior.

No chance to create a bootable disk until I return home. Will try re-flash at that time.

Nothing in the event logs

[Lazarus]

If you can boot into safe mode then try to:
A) Disable any and all drivers & services not absolutely required.
B) Reinstall as many of the required drivers as possible.

Safe mode is limited in what you can touch, so you might not be able to perform certain (un)installs, but try as many as possible.

It sounds to me like your graphic's sub-system gets into serious trouble as soon as it tries to take over from the default VESA boot mode.

So as a last step, try to disable the TP graphic's driver and switch back to VESA or VGA mode.
VESA will still give you max resolution, but its going to be slow as heck.

Both use a standard driver w/o any HW specific optimizations.