Thinkpad T20 Crashing

[mattis]

Hi, newby to the forum so please be gentle

Ok, I have searched through the forums and read several threads on the T20 and it's common probs (awesome resource btw). I have just bought a 700Mhz T20 with 256Mb of ram, it was running CentOS4.1 fine for a few days and then all of a sudden has been having kernel panics, probs starting (screen not coming on, not POST'ing and needing several attempts) and also crashing half way through a boot. In some cases it POST's and then gives CRC errors (points to bad sectors on HDD, but it still crashes even when booting/using only the CD drive) other times it just hangs at different stages of boot (doesnt give the CRC error message). Leaving it for a few a while powered down can sometimes get it all through boot and into the GUI, where it stays for a while and then freezes with the caps lock and scroll lock lights flashing. Other times I boot it to run-level 3 (no GUI, just CLI) and it stays up fine for an hour at least so far....

I have a sneeking suspicion it is overheating. My first question is regarding the fan on these, is it meant to run all the time, or only come on when it needs to (gets hot enough)?. Sometimes the system starts up with the fan running and then the fan turns off a short time later, other times it doesnt start the fan when it boots and the fan doesnt seem to come on. I had a similar issue with another box I had (kept crashing) and it turned out to be the fan failing and system overheating. There doesnt seem to be anything in the BIOS to check system temp/fan speed, does the IBM PC Doctor program have anything that will show this?

Could it be a memory issue? I am guessing the memory has been upgraded (came standard with 128Mb), perhaps it is not slotted correctly so that is probably going to be the first thing I try, remove memory, clean with eraser and re-seat. I might try one stick at a time as well. I ran memtest86 over it and it did go crazy with a whole pile of errors displayed after an hour of running the program, but if it is overheating then this might have been it simply crashing. I might re-seat the CPU whilst Im at it too and possibly replace the CMOS battery, this seems to be a common suggestion.

Should I be checking the heatsink stuff on top of the CPU, I have read in other threads that the T20 has some dodgy crap on the top that cracks when it gets hot. Should I remove this and replace with some standard thermal paste?

I have also removed the battery and run it on AC power only, same probs. Removing the PCMCIA wireless card doesnt help either. It even crashes when I try booting off the Windows XP cd as soon as it goes to "checking system setup", however it is running an old BIOS which may not have the necessary req's for XP.

If the main/motherboard is dead (appears to be a common prob) can a T21 or T22 board (Ive seen a few in Aust cheap) be put in its place and the memory/CPU etc from my current T20 placed into this new motherboard?

Any Thoughts/Inputs/Suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[mattis]

Well I think I "may" have found/solved my problem. When I got home from work I decided to re-seat the memory in it's DIMM's to start with. Well guess what, it had a stick of 128Mb Hynix PC133 in it. From perusing the forums I know T20's dont take PC133, only PC100. The other 128Mb stick is the geniune IBM PC100 jobbie (standard factory fitted I assume) so I left that in there. Now I am typing this from my lappy which has been running solid for 30mins, probably the longest yet since the crashes started occurring, needless to say I will be testing it a little more before I celebrate.

I am noticing things are a fair bit slower to load though (spose thats to be expected though) so I think I might need to hit ebay for some more ram (and maybe sell off this stuff). Any suggestions on what brand of ram to purchase for the T20 (model numbers etc to search ebay with)?

Thanks