T23 died this morning...bad system board for 2nd time?

[jongordo8]

I had an issue with my T23 this summer and you guys helped me diagnose that it was a bad system board. Bought a new one off of ebay, installed it, and it has worked flawlessly since. This morning out of the blue the screen goes blank. I take the battery out of it, put it back in, restart it.

Same symptoms as before. Power goes on, however the CPU fan pulses and it never loads. Screen is a blank screen with a gray bar on the top. So sounds like a bad system board again right?

Why the hell does this keep happening, and what can I do about it?

Before I buy a 3rd system board, can someone on here suggest what else I could try to make sure that is the problem and not something else.

Thanks in advance

[pphilipko]

Your system board failed because:

a) You were not careful with your thinkpad, or
b) You are simply having a spate of bad luck (which is the most probable case)

As you cannot even access the bios, motherboard failure is most likely. I'm afraid your only option is to get a new motherboard, or get a new laptop (which I recommend).

[Russel_h]

I am having this problem with my machine, the bizzare thing is it can be coaxed back to life with the following procedure. 1. Remove the batteries including CMOS backup one 2. press the start key for a while. Put the batteries back and hey presto it springs to life, usual checksum errors etc. It will then work normally so long as it is poered on. Switch it off for a few minutes it will boot up. A few hours and its back to the fan hunting and not even a BIOS message. I am perplexed.

[Russel_h]

Update, dissaembled it, soldered anything near any SMPS circuits inductors, caps etc. Reassembled it, now seems OK at least for the past few days.

Russ

I am having this problem with my machine, the bizzare thing is it can be coaxed back to life with the following procedure. 1. Remove the batteries including CMOS backup one 2. press the start key for a while. Put the batteries back and hey presto it springs to life, usual checksum errors etc. It will then work normally so long as it is poered on. Switch it off for a few minutes it will boot up. A few hours and its back to the fan hunting and not even a BIOS message. I am perplexed.

[t20user]

I have this issue with my T23 now. Can you give a detailed description of where you touched up the solder on the mobo? I have a few dead boards I cen look around for cold solders on, is that what is going on with a lot of these dead mobos?

[jongordo8]

there are little black box pieces on both sides of the motherboard that I guess come loose, look for those.

[stuartf]

Intermittent problems like this are likely connections. I recently had by Gateway 600 not booting even to bios. I assumed it was the MOBO; I broguht it to my talented friend and he said he just re-seated everything at it fired right up. It has been fine ever since.

No idea what particular connection it was as he just did them all at once.

[t20user]

Intermittent problems like this are likely connections. I recently had by Gateway 600 not booting even to bios. I assumed it was the MOBO; I broguht it to my talented friend and he said he just re-seated everything at it fired right up. It has been fine ever since.

No idea what particular connection it was as he just did them all at once.

What did he reseat? Did he resolder, or just reconnect the internal cables and connectors. That seemed to work for my video problem on my T20, I will have to try that on the T23. However from the amount of posts around here about dead mobos I think mine is doa.