HELP!!! with T30

[steveho]

My machine is a 1.5 year old T30- 2366-xxj. It is an IBM refurb. The problem I'm having is that it locks up solid once in a while, unreproduceable. What I mean by locks up is that the entire machine will not respond, not even the mouse. The screen freezes on what it was last displaying.

I've had this happen when browsing the internet (IE), while doing a variety of applications, or while just sitting at the desktop, or even while it's in stand-by (lid closed). When it happens, the cpu fan turns on. If I don't have the machine plugged in, and it is in stand by, it'll drain the battery down to 0.

It has done this since day 60. It happens with a frequency of 4x per day, down to 1x per 3 weeks. Like I said before, I can't find any common denominator.

Here's one interesting tidbit: It has never locked up while playing NFSU or NFSU2. When I play NFSU2, it's usually for several hours. But it could lock up in the 10 minutes it takes to type this note.

PC Doctor (the one that came with this computer) found nothing, but I expected that. SO I just downloaded memtest and will run that for several hours just to see what it can find.

I did R&R from the hidden partition, early on to see if it would help, but the problem still exists. I called the IBM service, but I can't do without the computer for a whole week. The warranty is now up (1yr warranty).

Any suggestions on what to do?

[sktn77a]

If you did a rescue and recovery from the hidden partition or recovery CD, then this would point to a hardware problem (or did you just do a Windows XP restore?).

[steveho]

I did a rescue and recovery. That brought the system back to the original state.

If it is a hardware problem, what can I do? How can I figure out which component is bad? Or is there a common problem in this machine?

[jdhurst]

The T30 is a reliable machine. There is a known problem with memory bank errors, but (1) that does not cause lockups and (2) there is an engineering fix for the problem. If the fan is turning on, that suggests the CPU is looping (or something like that) driving the CPU to 100 percent. Does the event log show anything? (not likely, but it is worth a try).
... JDHurst

[steveho]

The event log shows nothing. Just that the computer was started up, but nothing at the time of lockup.

I will try leaving the task manager up and running to see if it locks up as well.

I have tried reseating the following: network card, modem, bluetooth, memory, battery, cd-rw.

[steveho]

I ran the memtest 86+ and after several hours, it came up with nothing. So, now, if the problem is a hardware issue, how does one go about getting it fixed without a warranty?

Others have mentioned problems with the wireless, so I may try turning the wireless off for several days to see if that helps with the issue, but I love my wireless.

Any other ideas?