Thinkpad T20 problems - Power and frequent crashing

[nkessler2000]

Hello,

I originally posted this on Usenet, but someone suggested I try here too.

Here's my problem. I recently "inherited" a T20 from a family member who said it was broken. I checked it out and it does have a couple problems. First, the battery holds no charge. If you try to run it on battery, it will last about a second then die. Second, it experiences random crashes in the form of the Blue Screen of Death. Sometimes it will crash immediately, sometimes it will work for a long while and then crash. But whatever the case, it crashes whenever it feels like it. Reinstalling the OS, and even installing a different OS did not help the problem.

For the crashing problem, I figured it was the memory, as has been my experience in the past. I ran Memtest86 on it, but it tested clean. So I continued to use the machine, and it crashed again after a while, so I ran Memtest86 immediately after, and immediately Memtest started giving errors. I powered off, waited a minute, rebooted and tested again, but this time it was fine. Since I did get errors though, I decided to replace the memory chip. I did so with a brand new chip, but I'm still having the exact same problem. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes it doesn't. Sometime Memtest errors, sometimes it doesn't. I'm stumped.

As for the power problem, I figured it was simply a dead battery. I got a replacement battery, but this battery won't charge either. With the new battery, when you plug it into the AC, the battery light just flashes orange, rather than staying a solid orange. With the old battery, if you plugged it in with the machine powered off, the battery light would turn solid orange or solid green until you booted up, at which point it would start flashing orange. So I'm guessing it's more than the battery here.

Is there anything else I can do for either of these problems, or is this system effectively hosed? Any feedback, suggestions, advice would be appreciated.

Nick

[AbsoluteRaleigh]

If you are certain it is not the memory or a driver issue, the bluescreens are caused by a bad system board. It is rare but does happen.