T40 Issues... I've run out of solutions...

[DCB2006]

This is my first post. Hello and nice to meet you all.

Now...

I have a Thinkpad T40. I love it. It's been good to me. In the last week or so, it's been acting strange with random freezes and reboots.

Last week

I've troubleshooted the last few days and have ruled out bad RAM. Formatted the drive and reinstalled windows fresh when I got to the office this morning. So I know it's no virus either. I also swapped out the RAM, to no avail.

She still freezes and reboots. Did it a couple of times during a format and the installation!

Which tells me this is a heat thing.

I noticed the fan was mighty quiet. At this point I took the laptop apart a bit so that I could see the fan in action. It spins all day while in the BIOS. But when you boot to Windows, it spins (while in the POST stage) for a sec, then stops, and that's it! Once I'm in the OS and the fan isn't doing a [censored] thing.

Any suggestions? Is it a ACPI thing?

HELP!

Yesterday

I ignored the laptop all weekend and enjoyed the wonderful weather. When I got into the office yesterday, I made it a point to get that T40 fan utility to do its thing and see where that would lead me. Here's what I observed:

Using the BIOS settig in the fan control util, I get beeps every second with this in the log:

[5/1/2006 11:55:10 AM] Fan: 0x80 / Highest: 28°C (28 27 25 26 23 n/a 22 n/a 0 0 0 0)
[5/1/2006 11:55:10 AM] Smart: Set fan control to 0x00, Result: CMD IGNORED (PASSIVE MODE)
[5/1/2006 11:55:10 AM] Fan: 0x80 / Highest: 28°C (28 27 25 26 23 n/a 22 n/a 0 0 0 0)
[5/1/2006 11:55:10 AM] Smart: Set fan control to 0x00, Result: CMD IGNORED (PASSIVE MODE)
[5/1/2006 11:55:11 AM] Fan: 0x80 / Highest: 27°C (27 27 25 26 23 n/a 22 n/a 0 0 0 0)

'Smart' doesn't give me those errors, but it makes the fan stop.

'Manual' is the only one that works thus far.

In addition to getting the fan to run constantly, I changed the CPU clock speed to the lowest setting to see what effect it would have. Seemed to work fine and I thought I resoleved my issues with these work arounds... Then it froze again!

The last thing I'm gonna try is re-apply some (better) thermal compound. As it stands, the machine is only stable when at its lowest clockspeed, which isn't going to fly.

As I saidm the machine has been great in the two years I've owned it. The only issues I've had was the built in wireless constantly dropping the wi-fi signal, and iffy USB ports that would keep dropping the device attached, although that was pretty random.

Long post, I know. Any help would be appreciated.

[cmarti]

You have a faulty motherboard, your T40 is still in warranty?

[DCB2006]

I bought it used. Is there an easy way to determine that, short of calling up Lenovo? The original owner had it less than 6 months prior to me buying it.

I just took the entire thing apart, cleaned it, re-applid the thermal compound. I wish it were some other part that needed replacement other than the mobo. I mean, it boots, it's just not stable. When I think of a bad mobo, booting isn't even an option.

Edit: Still under warranty. Just called hardware support and should receive the shipping box in a day or two.