That T23 my sister bought--Well, it's sick

[pjc30943]

Several months back I found a T23 for my sister, currently studying in college. Advice from these forums assisted in the decision of a T23.

She just called half-panicked, saying that her laptop died. She has a lab report on it, due tomorrow

She arrived back to the fan blowing, and the screen packed with vertical lines--nothing underlying actually discernable.

*But*, she was unable to turn the machine off, even after pressing the power button for 10-15 seconds. That means it's not just the LCD cable or screen.

After removing the battery and restarting, all appeared fine until she logged in (XP), about 2 seconds after the login screen appeared. Then, immediately back to vertical lines once into Windows.
Then she called me.

So is this an overheating issue? The symptoms might be consistent. The fact that the lines appeared only after logging in might be a coincidence, since the machine may have heated up again coincidentally. Or maybe it is indeed a driver issue.

I asked her to take out the battery and let the machine cool.

But before doing any more powerups of the machine, I told her to wait until I ask you all what would be the safest next step--in case this could get worse the more it's powered on.

My thought: let it cool, safe mode startup to DOS, restore registry from last week in case it's a video driver issue, and other similarly standard things...

[claudeo]

No panic. It might be the good old bad screen connection issue I've seen on my TP600 and T21. First, try to power on and to hit Fn+F7 a few times. If that does not do any good, try to massage the back of the screen. When looking at the screen, massage the back with fingers approximately 2/3rds of the way across from the left side (closer the right side, near the middle vertically). That tiny movement might move the connector just enough to make contact for a while. Don't push hard enough to break anything. If that doesn't work, borrow a monitor and plug it into the monitor port, then hit Fn+F7 until the video comes on the monitor. At least that would allow getting some work done. Get it to a *qualified* service center (IBM certified) to clean and reseat the connector behind the screen. It might also be something completely different, of course. But the vertical lines are kind of familiar.