t42 freeze when off a/c

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maja z · #1 Post by **maja z** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:30 am

Hi!
I've had this t42 for a couple of months now, everything working perfectly until... Until i unplug the power supply. After swithcing to battery it usualy freezes within a couple of minutes. The mouse pointer stops dead, and the keyboard is unresponsive. Ctrl/Alt/Del doesn't work, i can only hold down the on/of button for about 5 secs to turn it of, and then turn it on again. After restarting it there is no error message or anything. it seems to be completely irrelevant what i am doing, as long as the a/c is on, it's ok, and as soon as the battery is on it starts freezing.
You can imagine i didn't buy a laptop so i can only use it at my desk, so any help will be greatly appreciated!
ALso, if i just unplug it to take it to another room, and plug it back in there (so it runs on battery for maybe 10 seconds), it will stil freeze, even after it's been pluged back in. So i have to turn it of to move and replug and turn on again. A real pain, i tell you.
Please, any thoughts?
Cheers, Maya.

sugo · #2 Post by **sugo** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 12:39 pm

Did the problem start on day 1? Have you tried the restore CDs to see if it's software issue?

maja z · #3 Post by **maja z** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 1:14 pm

well, i gues it has been going on from the start. but it took me a really long time to figure out what was causing it. Because of course every time it happened, i reasoned it was because of some recently installed software. so i'd uninstall it and it seemed to be fine, until it happened again and i faulted another piece of recently installed software etc... The fact that it was running on battery power just didn't occur to me for a very long time, since it would be just so much more logical that it was a software thing. so to answer your question - in the past couple of months i have only uninstalled recent software that i guesed was problematic, but it always turned out that that wasn't the problem. but i have not done a complete system restore. do you think that would make sense?
thanx!
maya.

neoflight · #4 Post by **neoflight** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 11:34 pm

did u try looking for what processes windows is running?

+ u can remove the battery and restart the system on a/c and see what the cpu usage is and compare with that of battery power run.

i have had problem with some dll files of applications i had already removed. try using ad-aware, spybot, registry mechanic ect to clean ur system.

if everything fails follow the instructions. call the ibm police before its too late

maja z · #5 Post by **maja z** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:21 am

It gets even better. After some further deduction i have concluded that the offending factor is the internet connection - or rather lack thereof. So it doesn't freeze depending on wether it's running on battery power or not (my mistake) , but only when it's disconnected from the Internet. Does that possibly make sense to anyone?!?
This is the only common denominator to the instances when it frezes - no spesific program running... on average it will freeze within 10 minutes of being turned on without being connected. It freezes even if i don't enter my windows password and leave it for a couple of minutes. (by freeze i mean frozen screen, no response from keyboard or mouse, Ctrl/Alt/Del doesn't work, and i have to hold the power button for a few seconds for it to shut down) After restarting there is no error report, no recovery of documents from programmes like Word, and no log in the Event Viewer. I've scanned for viruses, and found none, i ran spybot and "fixed" all "red entries"...

Any ideas anyone?
cheers,
m,

ps. can someone with access change the topic name to ".... off-line"

#6 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:46 am

A couple of thoughts.

You should do a virus scan. If you have antivirus software on your laptop, make sure it has the latest virus signatures off the internet. Boot up in safe mode and scan your hard disk. If you don't have a current antivirus program - you need to get one.

Download and install Spybot, Ad Aware, or some other spyware detection program. Boot up in safe mode, and scan for spyware.

There is a chance that your hard drive is beginning to fail. There are ways to get information from the SMART area of the hard drive, regarding problems the hard drive is reporting on itself. I haven't done this yet, so I can't help you much more regarding this.

maja z · #7 Post by **maja z** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:57 am

i have anti-virus software (avast) and everything seems clean. i also cleared all problems with spybot..
do you think this could be a hardware problem? i'm thinking of uninstalleing everything, formating the disk, using the recovery cd-s and strating from scratch. (but i'd rather not get into this unless it's absolutely necessary)
m.

#8 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:39 am

I found a link to a drive fitness test program. It needs to be installed on a bootable floppy disk. You would need a USB external floppy disk drive to run the program. It may be possible to creat a bootable CD and run it from there, I am not sure.

http://www.thinkpad-portal.com/modules. ... st_(v3.68)

Note the above web address is missing the last 2 characters, as they created a smiley. Missing characters is number 8 and right parentheses. Also, delete the characters before http. I am not sure why they are showing up?

If you do the Recovery CD route, you may want to creat a backup of your existing system on DVD's or CD's with the IBM Rapid Restore Ultra program first. Then you can recover your files. Also, if it turns out that the hard drive is bad, you can return your system to it's former state, by restoring from your backup.

bing · #9 Post by **bing** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 11:33 am

I recently bought a T43 with the exact same problem. No-error-hangs after about 5-10 minutes use, system completely unresponsive (the only thing I found still operational was contrast control). It happened out of the box; I only had time to install firefox, so that rules out most malware/virus causes. All diagnostics came up negative; removed and reseated hardware, even updated drivers that had come out since being shipped.

I sent it in for servicing and they replaced the system board. It's still hanging, though (less frequently though). It's been relatively hot (85?) recently, but not incredibly so. I hope it's not a trend with the new thinkpads.

Kenn · #10 Post by **Kenn** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 1:41 pm

I thought the title of this thread was funny, in an ironic kind of way

pphilipko · #11 Post by **pphilipko** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 6:42 pm

Kenn wrote:I thought the title of this thread was funny, in an ironic kind of way

LOL

t42 freeze when off a/c

t42 freeze when off a/c

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