Unique video/display issue

[anifauqa]

For the T40:

When I turn on the system, the video displays fine, either through the LCD or through an external monitor. The display will be fine so long as I leave the system on.

However, if I reboot, or shut down and restart, the video will not display, either through the LCD or an external monitor (but I can tell from the sounds that the system is booting fine).

I have to let the system "rest" for 10-15 minutes, and then turn on, and it will display fine again.

Any ideas?

[poshgeordie]

Hi anifauqa and welcome to the forums and sorry to hear of the problems you're having with your T40.

It's a slightly unusual symptom but I'm fairly certain that the Graphics Chip has become unsoldered from the motherboard - a quite common problem with T4x's.

I think what's happening with your laptop is that the graphics chip becomes very hot but just hangs on to it's solder connections so long as you keep it running.
When you switch it off, the chip temperature continues to rise and causes local warpage of the graphics chip, which lifts some of the solder balls off the motherboard and hence no display until it's cooled down.

There are a number of posts about this and doing a search will take you to them.

Also my own company in the UK carries out reflowing - that is resoldering of graphics chips - we advertise here on the forums. Note that due to the prohibitive shipping costs between our countries it's unlikely to be cost effective to reflow your board but there are a few companies in the US who do this - again search within the forums for more informationl.

[anifauqa]

Thanks posh, I think you're right.

I tinkered with the machine more. When the video goes out, if I press down on the palmrest near the GPU, the video will flicker back on intermittently.

Now I just have to see if I can get this fixed on the cheap-- it's too bad that a problem like this can ruin a good machine.

Thanks again!