My trusty T40p won't boot.

[kawal]

My trusty T40p has never let me down - until now. And I'm stumped.

My wife was using the Thinkpad to read a CDROM and she couldn't get it to recognize the D: drive (CD recorder, DVD player). I couldn't either so I decided to reboot Windows XP. I got as far as the IBM startup screen and that was it. Pushing the blue IBM Access button just got me some beeps. I got into the BIOS and saw nothing wrong. 2 GB of RAM was recognized and so was the 80 GB Travelstar hard drive. I pulled the hard drive anyway and stuck it in a USB adapter and plugged it in to my desktop - the hard drive was easily recognized along with all folders - so no hard drive failure. The BIOS recognizes the hard drive, but it won't boot off of it.

I tried booting off of the built in DVD drive with a Window XP install CD - nothing. I tried another USB CD drive with the XP disc - no boot. In all cases the drives are recognized in the BIOS OK, even the external USB drive. But it won't boot. I tried altering the boot startup sequence in the BIOS - it won't boot from any drive no matter what the order.

The Thinkpad will power off with the white power button and power up with the power button. The fan definitely runs and the CD drive will start up with a disc in it, and I think I can hear the hard drive (tough because it's quiet), but it won't boot.

I could be wrong but it seems like lately the fan is noisier than usual. I'm really not sure, and I have no idea whether if it is, it is related to the problem.

Any ideas out there?

Thanks,

Ray

[kawal]

Just as a follow up, as I was shutting down the computer while still in Windows (after it would not recognize the CD drive), I seem to remember a quick window come up about "hard drive failure" or something like that. But as I mentioned, the drive runs fine in a USB enclosure on another computer and it is recognized in the BIOS. But the TP won't boot from ANY drive - hard drive or CDROMs, even though they are recognized in the BIOS. All I get is the IBM splash screen saying press the blue button if you don't want a normal startup. Then no action after that.

Ray

[Johan]

Ray:

What you describe could (at least!) be caused by several things: Failing RAM, failing motherboard. If you are still able to make your T40p beep during boot, than do that and see Beep and no beep symptoms - ThinkPad General - any help there? It sounds a bit suspect to me that you intermittently saw a "hard drive failure" message... what if the drive is OK, except that it cannot be booted from... isn't that possible? If you wish, you may run a disk test; the misc. vendors have all tools for this purpose (for your Hitachi Travelstar, the tool is named "Hitachi Drive Fitness Test"). Of course, you have obviously (or, at least, potentially!) several problems, since you also cannot boot from neither the CD-ROM drive or some USB-device. Surely seems more related to the ThinkPad itself, than to the hard drive...

I once had a terrible lot (!!) of trouble with a T42p (it behaved almost like yours do, now), and it turned out to be caused by a bad stick of RAM. So, since you have two sticks of 1GB RAM each (one "inside" the ThinkPad, and one in the expansion slot, accessible from the bottom), try remove one of them, reboot, and if not OK, then take out that stick of RAM, and try reboot again using the other stick; any difference? You will find information about how to access the internal RAM module either in the Hardware Maintenance Manual - ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p and in the Hardware removal and installation - ThinkPad T40/p, T41/p, T42/p, T43/p. See if the suggestions in the threads Intermittent Issues or T41P shuts off with internal monitor may be of some help?

Let's know how this matter progress... good luck!

Johan

[kawal]

Thanks, Johan, for the reply.

I pulled the 1 gb memory chip out and got into the BIOS and it shows 1024 mb as expected. The only time it beeps is when I hold down a function key for awhile. The only function key that does anything is the F1 key that allows me into the BIOS. I don't see anything abnormal in the BIOS. I've played with the Startup sequence, trying the hard drive first, the internal and USB CDROMs first, but just no action trying to access any drives.

I mentioned the quick notice about a hard drive failure (or similar), but I'm thinking that could have been caused by Windows suddenly not being able to access the hard drive as it was shutting down. As I mentioned, the drive works when connected to a USB port into my desktop. Maybe I'll try connecting to the USB in the Thinkpad, just to see if it will boot from there - I doubt it since it wouldn't boot from the CDROM. Of course, if I do this, I won't have an internal hard drive even connected - I don't know if that's a boot issue or not.

I read the post about the T41P shuts off with internal monitor. It mentioned "removing all of the ram", but I thought the first 1 gb was soldered in and not accessible. Is there a way to remove it? That thread also mentioned "the infamous GPU problem" - is this something I should look into that sounds relevant?

Thanks,

Ray

[Beaver]

One RAM slot is under the keyboard, second one is accessible via the bottom cover. There is no RAM soldered onto systemboard.

[kawal]

Ah yes, now I remember the second RAM slot - thank you - it's been awhile since I installed the RAM.

When I went back in the room where my Thinkpad was sitting open, I found that PC Doctor had come up. Apparently it took awhile after I must have pressed the "correct" function key. So it is now running, and so far passing all tests - it's doing the lengthy hard drive test now.

I'll report back when I get some results. I hope it leads to a fix.

By the way, the link for PC Doctor bootable disk on the Lenovo site seems to go nowhere. I was going to create a disk and see if I could get that to run on the CD Drive. But since I was unable to do that, it seems that it must now be running from the hard drive.

Ray

[kawal]

Well, I've still got a mystery here, but my T40p is working again. I let PC Doctor go through the complete diagnostic tests and it found nothing wrong with anything. Once done, it asked if I wanted to reboot, I said yes, and it booted into windows like like normal. I decided to pull the keyboard mostly so I could check the fan, since some of the forum threads seemed to related to overheating problems. Once I pulled the keyboard I did find one thing suspicious - a pinched wire where one of the keyboard mounting studs is located. Here's a photo:

There are a pair of black and gray wires passing next to the mounting stud. If you look closely, the black wire was caught under the stud. When I reinstalled the keyboard, I made sure it was pulled away from that area. I have no idea whether this was related to the no-boot problem or not.

The fan looked clean and I blew out very little dust. So I'm still bewildered why it wouldn't previously boot. I'm still wondering about the hard drive, but I just ran the Hitachi drive test and no problems were indicated. I wouldn't mind swapping out the 80 Gb drive for a bigger one, but there's not much point if there are no problems with this one.

I'd still like to hear from other owners if they've had anything similar happen to them. But no memory problems were indicated in PC Doctor, nor hard drive, nor CDROM. So it doesn't leave very much besides the motherboard - and now it runs fine again. I'm just wondering whether I can trust it for traveling, however.

So thanks again for your replies, and I'm still open to ideas.

Ray