My t61p won't boot

[Tetro]

Hello everyone,

I've just moved to Japan for an internship and my trusty 5 years old Thinkpad started behaving strangely since he was first plugged to 100V input (it used to be 220V).

Now he simply won't boot, when I try to turn it on, the caps lock and num lock leds turn on briefly as they usually would do, the optical drive seeks as he usually would do. The power on led turns on and stays on, but then it just stops doing anything. The screen doesn't turn on and the hard drive's led never turns on, the fan also doesn't start.

After some extensive retries at turning it on with and without battery or cable, it decided to turn on, but at some point I left the room and it was turned off when I came back, I wasn't able to turn it on since then. What makes me think that this may be power related is that sometimes when I try to turn it on, the computer doesn't even manage to do what I described above, it simply turns the power led on then it gets shut down immediately, and does so every few seconds as long as I don't remove the power source.

I actually found another exact same AC adapter at my work place but using this one didn't change anything, which in turn doesn't point to an issue with the power, which makes the whole problem even weirder.

Thanks for your help.

[Penultimate]

"So I called up IBM support and explained the situation. The guy on the other end then let me in on the secret power button code to revive your dead Thinkpad. After assessing the situation (totally dead laptop) he warned me: “Okay, this is going to sound totally bizarre, but I want you to give this a try…” He then had me unplug the AC adapter and take out the battery. Then, you push the power button 10 times in a row at one second intervals. Next, you push and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Then you put the battery back in and push the power button… and she lives. The computer came back, good as ever."

http://www.masnick.com/2007/09/07/the-s ... k-to-life/

Give it a shot and see what happens. best of luck.

[Tetro]

I had heard about that technique and tried it a couple times already, but it didn't help. I guess it still does something since on the next attempt after I do it, some leds turn on and off before the actual boot attempt, but it still has no effect unfortunately...

[RealBlackStuff]

Do you have a 2-prone or 3-prone power plug?
Japan has two different power plans: the Western part has 100V/60Hz, the Eastern part (incl. Tokyo) has 100V/50Hz.
Both only require 2-prone plugs.

It could still be a faulty power supply.
Your T61p needs a 20V/90W adapter.
Running on 100V mains, a 65W adapter (if that's what you have) will probably not cut it for the 'hungry' T61p.

[Tetro]

I have both actually, the plug that came with the computer is 3-prong (for which I use a converter from EU style to US style) and I found a Japanese one that's 2-prong, both of them are 20V/90W, (at least that's what's written on them, but I'll admit I do not know much about all the power plans and specifics so I may be missing the point here ).
The computer ran the first days I was here but progressively became harder and harder to boot, and its performances were getting worse and worse for some reason.

[RealBlackStuff]

What are the 7-character TYPE and PRODUCT ID of your machine?
On a label on the bottom, looks like e.g. TYPE 6458-CTO and PRODUCTID 6458B56
Remove the HD/SSD and then try to boot, any better?

[Tetro]

Hey guys, kind of a late comeback but anyway, my T61 is back at full force so I felt like I should tell you about it.

Weird thing is, I basically did nothing, I just left the computer to rest for a week without even trying to turn it on, when I came back to it, the computer was booting but there was still a continuous beep and it ended up turning off just like it did the first time.
I left it to rest a bit more, and now it's been around a month and a half without the slightest issue. I did not remove any hardware, unscrew anything or unplug anything, simply left it to take a nap.

I am using the 2-prong Japanese style plug that I found here, the very one with which I originally had the same issues I had with my European style plug. And now it works fine.

So... I guess that wraps it up, even though I'm sorry that I can't be more technical about what revived my computer. Anyway, thank you for the support, it is always nice to see a dedicated community !

Yann

[TuuS]

Yann, unfortunately your symptoms lead me to believe you have a failing GPU chip. If so the problem will resurface, it's only a matter of time.

Let's hope it doesn't, but if this is the case the only reliable fix is a new motherboard in which case I'd recommend Intel graphics to avoid this reoccurring.