Think Pad T20 Doesnt turned ON

[basu]

when I press the 'on' button, all that happens is that the Hard Drive light briefly flickers, a tiny soft 'click' can be heard from within the machine,

I have tried removing both RAM chips, and switching on (I read on another site that faulty memory can cause my symptoms, and to try this). I tried 'on' with each RAM chip fitted individually.

I've also removed the HD and tried to turn it on

The battery light is green when the adaptor is connected, suggesting the battery is full. It doesn't matter whether it's run on battery only or with mains adaptor connected - it doesn't start. The only difference is that, with the adaptor connected, the battery light comes on (it doesn't with battery only - should it?!), and when I press the 'on' button, the battery light goes out momentarily suggesting that power is being drawn when the button is pressed - I think!

Thanks for any suggestions.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

What you appear to have is a system which has been afflicted with what has become know as the "Blink of Death", i.e. BoD. You can find some information about this in the following thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=48835

As of now, there does not appear to be a 100% solution to solve this problem. Most people have replaced the system board but it is entirely possible that the replacement board could be affected with the same problem in the future.

Generally, you can eventually get the system to boot by removing both the main battery and the AC adapter for a couple of days. I have a T22 and an A21p with this same problem. They will boot fine several times in a row, then exhibit this BoD. No matter how many time you try to power up, you just get the blink of the hard drive LED. Left unpowered for a few days usually allows the system to recover and you can power it up again.

[basu]

Hi Again

I have replaced the mother board to solve this problem, now my laptop got turned ON but now i have some more questions.

1. Is it necessory to install a fresh copy of XP whenever i change the mother board coz my laptop shows that your harddriver not installed and it goes automatically to setup.

2.when i tried to install the new copy of XP it got stuck at the point where it says set up is starting windows, and nothing happens.

I dont know how to proceed now.

Plz help

[rkawakami]

Assuming that the motherboard is of the same type as your original board AND you are using the same hard drive that was in the system before, then Windows should not have any problems recognizing it, or any of the other hardware components being attached. Neither should Windows need to be re-installed. I guess some further questions need to be asked before continuing:

- was the system working 100% prior to the "blink of death" issue? By that I mean booting and Windows running?
- if yes, then has any of the other pieces of hardware been changed; hard drive, memory, MiniPCI modem/ethernet card etc. (besides the motherboard)?
- if the system now is able to power up and boot properly, have you tried running diagnostics? Download a copy of PC Doctor from here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4YZM3F (three diskettes)

or here:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/ibm_t22_pcdiag.iso (.ISO image of those three diskettes burnable onto a CD)

Usually, if Windows hangs during the middle of installing, it happens about 30-35 minutes into the process. That cause is due to a bad MiniPCI card; remove it and retry the install again. If Windows has not even gotten that far, then there might be a problem with your "new" motherboard. Again, I'd suggest running PC Doctor diagnostics.

[basu]

Oh God,

After reading your post when i tried to ON my laptop, again there is a same problem "BOD" with another mother board.

what's happning ??

because of BOD i change mother board and there is same problem.

i think i will have to trash this laptop.

[spydergt]

blink of death , i guess , titled doesnt exactly match the symptoms but i hope theres a solution , what about flashing the bios , it sounds like a hardware problem , which is what i though it was , inverter and lcd screen is what i though , but i might just go for a cmos battery too , and completly let the power drain out n jump it just to make sure , cheap stuff , theres gotta be a way to get rid of it comepletely...

[spydergt]

i yanked the cmos battery out , traded hdds for my old one , opened the screeen , fiddled with it and put the screen back together , then reassembled everything and it works fine now , no problems at all , even WITH the cmos battery i got it to boot into dsl linux off the cd just fine , im thinking its the hdd that i had , it was from a t30a that my buddy gave me , everything seems to be kosher right now , it worked fine since last night at 4:30 am to 7 am when i called it quiting time , and now im testing again today at work , if it was the bod , its gone now , im gonna get a new cmos battery and lcd cable and inverter just in case cause i saw those cheap on ebay , plus maybe a spare hdd if i come across one cheap ..

[vlyne]

I've been away for a while and had hoped by the time I returned the BOD problem would have been solved, well and truly!

In the meantime, amongst other things I've been working on a couple of R50's that, while they don't have the BOD, won't boot up at all or else will fire up the fan but don't make it to the boot screen. One thing I've learnt is that these machines will quickly shutdown, and stay shut, for a period of time if there are any problems with the power supply to devices. If you are quick and catch the problem and disconnect the rogue device, the machine will fire up again "once it's cooled down". Of course, if you have the rogue device connected up again it won't boot. In my case, the device was a CD-RW which I happened to install in a perfectly fine R51. The R51 wouldn't even start (no lights nothing) with that CD-RW. Once it was removed everything was back to normal again.

After spending endless hours with BOD T20's and T21's, I'm convinced that this is the same problem with this series. It would seem that if you catch the problem in time and disconnect the rogue device, you may be ok. However, there also appears to be a "point of no return" where if you stress the power regulator beyond a certain limit it will not reset. The only solution then is to replace the regulator (Maxim chip) AND disconnect the rogue device - otherwise the problem WILL return.

The other thing I would suggest is to update the BIOS as soon as you can (not sure why but the machines with the newest BIOS appear to be more "robust" to power problems).

So, spydergt: Don't use that HDD again - even it works in an external enclosure, there's no guarantee that it's ok.

Back to my dungeon, and out of action again for a while.....

Cheers

[spydergt]

yea , it wouldnt work on a convert to my desktop either , it would show up for a lil while but then crap out , so i tossed it , shame too it was a twenty gig and now all i got for a back up is a 6 gig ,

but also i did notice while inside the screen casing the plastic bezel thingy that goes to the cable for the screen , well it was out of place and created a pinch point on the cable , i checked further up and found it had slightly dislodged the cable from the lcd screen , fixed that and now the t20 seems to be functioning properly , i also left the cmos battery out for like 2 months , hated it having to reset the time at every boot cause im poor and had no battery at the time, but all in all the main bod problem is gone completly,