T41 freezing problem

[Jeff85]

My refurbished T41 2373-xjx was working (for the most part) without problem until yesterday when I returned to college with my laptop in my backpack on the car floor. The 2-hour ride was perfectly smooth with pretty much nothing bumpy or anything. My T41 is less than 2 years old and came with a 1-year warranty from IBM.

That said, my laptop started randomly freezing. I suspect this is similar to what happened to me before ( http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight= ), as the screen would become distorted and I'd have to hold the power button until the laptop turned off and turn it back on. This time, though, the freezing wasn't quite the same. The most common occurence is that the screen would just go black after a while, though the backlight would still appear to be on. Sometimes it would turn funny garbled colors.

I sent my T41 to EasyServ over a year ago to have a similar problem repaired (I think they just switched out the motherboard, but I'm not sure), but now my T41 is no longer under warranty. I assume I can't extend my warranty now that it's already expired. Anyone know of a preferably non-expensive way to fix this? What are my options?

It appears that I could send it to EasyServ again, but it would cost over $400 to fix a motherboard problem (which is what I assume it is) as quoted on http://www-03.ibm.com/support/ezserv/pricing.jsp . I would definitely not be happy having to spend several hundred dollars on my laptop each year if the same problem comes back again.

Edit: I originally wrote it wouldn't boot anymore, but it looks like one of the locks on the battery wasn't locked, so I reinserted the battery and it boots, now. The "freezing" problem is still here, though it may not actually be freezing as I previously thought.

Just now the screen went black when I shifted the laptop position, but I shook the laptop a little more and the screen returned to almost normal, and it appears to be running okay, except for some weird random incorrect pixels being displayed, as shown in http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jchien/img/laptop/pixels.jpg . These pixel problems were only in the wallpaper, and didn't go away until I reapplied the wallpaper. It appears that if the screen just goes black, that my LCD may be temporarily disconnected or something? Any other insights on what the problem is?

However, after some more tests, sometimes the screen distorts whatever's currently on the screen, and then it really is frozen.