T61p no POST/boot after intermittent harddrive freezes

[bretddog]

Would appreciate some advice on how to proceed with diagnostic/repair of this problem.

T61p FX570M; 6459-CTO

Earlier symptoms;
Last 1-2 weeks, maybe 3 or 4 times it occurred;
Suddenly unresponsive, screen graphic patching up a bit, then within few seconds PC and screen would totally freeze. After about a minute; a single rather loud click, which I would call a head slam, from the hard-drive, after which the computer catches up, resuming normal operation.

Failure;
Today though, without those symptoms, it suddenly makes an instant power-down without warning.
Trying to restart, it may have been some hard-drive sounds at first attempts, but I can't positively remember. At least after a few attempts, it was nothing.

So current symptoms are;
No POST, no beep, black screen, no hard-drive spin-up. Only indicator lights (battery, caps-lock etc), and fan making a few rotations then stopping.
EDIT: HDD spins up after all, heatsink gets slowly hot and fan runs after a while to cool it down, so some activity occur..

Tried;
Removed hard-drive and DVD-drive; no difference.
Removed ram; tried any single of two in each slot, no difference.
Dust-busted a bit internally.

I have multimeter, solder station, oscilloscope; though on a laptop I've never done more than changing fans before..

So any ideas much welcomed..
Whether symptoms potentially indicative anything? Or methods of diagnosis?

[brchan]

Have you tried re-seating the CMOS battery? Does the HDD work in another computer?

[bretddog]

Have you tried re-seating the CMOS battery? Does the HDD work in another computer?

Did now; battery measure 3.24V.

An R61 thinkpad attempts to boot with same HDD, but I didn't run it past hardware change warnings.
But I guess some screen activity and bios should appear without HDD connected, which it doesn't, so not sure if it's condition is relevant, or it was just reacting to other symptoms..

Just noticed;
Although the screen is "dead", the heat-sink slowly heats up and after a while the fan turns on briefly to control temp. Also the HDD does spin up to a 'dormant' state/sound, but no sound of it being active. So there is somewhat more activity than I initially thought.

[brchan]

Does an external display work? I would also unplug all non essential hardware like DVD, touchpad, network card, etc and try that.

[bretddog]

Does an external display work? I would also unplug all non essential hardware like DVD, touchpad, network card, etc and try that.

External display gives no signal. Unplugged all internal cards, drives, touchpad.
No change.

[ajkula66]

External display gives no signal. Unplugged all internal cards, drives, touchpad.
No change.

That sounds like a motherboard - most likely GPU given the system - failure.

Have you tried this old trick:

Unplug the AC adapter, remove the battery, hard and media drives.

Press the "power" button ten times in a row, holding it down for ten seconds each time and thirty seconds the last time around.

Plug the AC adapter - but nothing else - back in and try to power on.

Good luck.

[bretddog]

External display gives no signal. Unplugged all internal cards, drives, touchpad.
No change.

That sounds like a motherboard - most likely GPU given the system - failure.

Have you tried this old trick:

Yea, I tried that a few times.

I'll dismantle it tomorrow for an inspection. And look for a new motherboard it seems..

[brchan]

As ajkula66 mentioned, it is probably gpu failure. It is common among pre 08/08 nvidia t61 models, and if you get a replacement board, its best to stick to intel based motherboards. Nvidia boards without the defect are rare and expensive to find.

[eru3]

Could be also CPU, but the odds are like 1:1000000.

If you have the opportunity, I would check it in the other, working motherboard to make sure to not waste the money on replacement board. Also, do the SMART test of HDD(google your friend) to make sure that except the noises nothing happened to it.