Thinkpads Forum

Hello all....

I've been at it all day today.

Disassembled working T61 (7663) with 08/08 date code due to cleaning dust off of heatsink fan and fresh coat of AS5 on CPU & GPU. Assembled it and turned on for about 5 min and "POOF" Power shuts down without any warning. I thought I accidently unplugged adaptor but no. Immediately turned back on but no sign of life. Installed battery and plugged ac adaptor and NOTHING

After performing that "Press power button 10 times in 1 second interval and press and hold 30 sec" power comes back on and running Win7 fine. about 30 min later, again "POOF!" Shuts down. Now I'm starting to sweat and thinking of worst case scenario. DEAD NVIDIA BOARD.

Am I right on this assumption? Can it be something else where I can magically make my T61 again? FYI, I disassembled 2 times already making sure things go where they belong and even reinstalled WIN7 in another spare drive I had. Same result about 10~15 min of running it just shuts it self down.

HELP~

Don't sound like your typical GPU failure and the fact that you just took everything apart indicates the problem is elsewhere. Most likely culprit for an instant "poof" shut off would be a short somewhere. I'd double check everything and making sure that some wire somewhere is not causing a short once you put some pressure on it. The other thing I would suspect is an overheating CPU due to the HSF not being installed properly but typically in this scenario it's a BSOD caused by thermal instability then a shutdown.

Cigarguy wrote:Don't sound like your typical GPU failure and the fact that you just took everything apart indicates the problem is elsewhere.

^^^^^^^ + 1

The other thing I would suspect is an overheating CPU due to the HSF not being installed properly.

This was my first thought when I read the OP, and still sounds like a plausible scenario in my opinion.

Temp is fine. When it was running for 10 min or so, I did check the temp with TPFC show around 47c~50c idling before "POOF"

Bad fuse? Dying MB? Short somewhere? None of which I cannot do anything about.

I'll continue tomorrow. Keep those diagnosis coming folks

What happens when it shuts down, does it do so gracefully, with LEDs going out a second or two after the screen, or is it all at once like asif someone just unplugged the cord?

I'd check the fitting of the heatsink, I had someone who installed a board and had the same exact problem and when I got the laptop I found a wire under the heatsink preventing contact on the gpu/chipset and causing thermal shutdown after a couple mins.

Thank you all for your diagnosis. I hope it is a matter of re-seating heatsink problem.

I will AGAIN disassemble everything and check again. I will report back soon

TuuS wrote:What happens when it shuts down, does it do so gracefully, with LEDs going out a second or two after the screen, or is it all at once like asif someone just unplugged the cord?

I thought my "POOF" expression described my symptoms perfectly but I guess not...
It does not shutdown gracefully. It just shuts down as if you unplugged adaptor without any battery pack attached

any update?

steed wrote:any update?

No. Not yet. I haven't done anything else since my last problem. This T61 got pushed aside since I'm working on another build
(T61 4:3 8891-CTO) for my cousin. This build consist spare/left over parts from 4 T61's into 1



I will disassemble and try again.