SOLVED: Yet another T40 blank screen

[Pixie]

Dear all,

I'm experiencing the infamous blank screen upon startup on my T40. I've read numerous posts regarding this. Here's a summary of the situation:

1. Power on, fan works, only "Power" LED is on, blank screen.

2. No VGA out.

3. I removed in turn each of my RAM chips, to no avail.

4. I emptied the capacitor by removing battery and pressing the power button, to no avail.

5. I applied pressure on the GPU, then turned laptop on, to no avail.

What is left to check? What can be done? Does the board need to be replaced? How do I know for sure before I spend $50 on a new board and wait a fortnight for it? (If it's the board, would you guys even bother with such an old laptop?) Could it still be the GPU, although pressure didn't help? (I've no intention of reflowing).

Thanks in advance!

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum!

... although it's kind'a sad to meet under such critical circumstances...

Suggestion: Try if you can boot off a CD, like e.g. mini-XP, and/or try if you can run the "PC Doctor" also off a CD - see this post.

If the laptop does however not even display the IBM logo during POST, then the above suggestions are obviously useless. Have you tried to pull *everything* - the battery, the HDD, the RAM, the CD-ROM, the WLAN interface, and the Bluetooth if any? Strip it as much as possible... and if still no display at boot (POST), then - well, then I guess you're in pretty bad shape.

Report back, then. Good luck!

Johan

[Pixie]

and if still no display at boot (POST), then - well, then I guess you're in pretty bad shape.

This is unfortunately the situation. Stripped down, no display at boot.

(There's no WiFi, and I'm not sure about Bluetooth; I couldn't find it; is that criticial?)

What are my options?

[Pixie]

What are my options?

Well, upon reassembly, and now only with battery and without AC, everything works.

(Should be noted that I had tried this combination long before I embarked upon disassembly).

Crazy. What could it be? Did I accidentally jiggle some stray connector when I took the laptop apart? Who knows.

[topshot]

If you were not even getting video output on the VGA connector then it's related to the graphics chip. Applying pressure didn't help but apparently all your handling was enough to get it to work again but almost certainly it won't stay that way. Either a new MB or attempting to reflow the chip are the only options I know.

[Theokretes]

Interesting...

I had a T40 that did the same thing (black screen, no LCD display, didn't wish to progress very far etc). Sometimes it would intermittently boot up and get to windows and display output. But it was very rare. I baked the board to no avail. Eventually binned it.