Thinkpads Forum

Last night I forgot to turn off the external hard drive connected through a PCMCIA Firewire I/F card before I Fn-F4 the T60 to standby, I turned the T60 back on, logged in, turned off the exteranl HD, and the Fn-F4 the T60 to standby.

It seems to work OK this morning, I then tried to Fn-F4 at one point and it did not standby, so I decided to use "restart", it never did restart, so I used the power button to turn off the unit and then turn it back on.

I have not been able to start the T-60 (8744-5BU) ever since,

Every time I tried, regardless if I used the power button, removed the AC adaptor and battery, or Alt-Ctl-Del, all I get is a flash of big ThinkPad text on the lower left side of the screen, and the text message "To interrupt normal start up, press the blue ThinkVantage button" under that, the screen then goes black a few seconds later and nothing happens after that no matter what I do or how long I wait.

I did press the blue ThinkVantage button as soon as I see the message, both a single press or hold the button down continiously, neither puts me into any other screen.

Since I never see the Windows is starting message, is this a sign the hard drive has packed it in? If so this is really disappointing as the laptop is only on at night from me getting home and going to bed, the laptop was purchased in early April, barely 4 months old.......

Any suggestions of what might have occured, or what I can try to recover from this situation from the Gurus here?

Is there any diagnostic mode in the BIOS that I can get into?

Many thanks in advance

Ken (using my trusted old T23 that is 5.5 years old and still going strong with no problems what-so-ever..........)

hi, doesn't sound good..
but why don't you just go into bios an look
you will find a harddrive check tool ^^

cu

I would if I could, I don't quite remember the full boot up sequence now, but this T-60 is behaving very strange, in that even after I have removed the battery and AC adaptor for a few minutes, then plug them back in and turn the power on, it still goes to the ThinkPad screen I described within 3 seconds or so.

It seems to bypass the normal power up sequences that I've seen in the past......

Oh no, I have the same exact problem and it happened yesterday too! Please some one help!

ayja wrote:Oh no, I have the same exact problem and it happened yesterday too! Please some one help!

What machine type/model Thinkpad do you have? (See the bottom sticker on the machine).

sorry, don't have it here with me at work but it is a t60p-2007 with 2 g memory and is about a year old.... HELP

Most of my newer Lenovos including T60 and 3000's won't get past the BIOS splash screen if there are any USB or firewire devices connected. I'd remove all cables inc power, the optical drive and battery and leave overnight. Then leaving the battery out, plug in the power, press and hold the Power button for 45 secs. Then try to boot and see what happens.

No luck.

I'm taking the unit in, I'm hoping it's just the systme board and not the hard drive........

This is the second T60 that I have seen failed, the other one is one of the 6 or so we bought at work (exact same machine type), it was a hard drive failure.

aviography wrote:No luck.

I'm taking the unit in, I'm hoping it's just the systme board and not the hard drive........

This is the second T60 that I have seen failed, the other one is one of the 6 or so we bought at work (exact same machine type), it was a hard drive failure.

d

Please keep us posted on the cause/fix. See my sig for the main reason for my concern .

Out of curiousity, would the hard drive after user name, password etc. have been set up, be usable directly on another ThinkPad of the exact identical machine type?

Just wondering if I could rule out either the hard drive or the system board in this manner.

My guess is probably not, but I don't mind if someone surprises me otherwise.

It should work in another machine, certainly enough to get you to boot, If you just want to get into BIOS (as a test) you don't have to hook up any drives at all. Can you get into BIOS by the way? (hold down F1 key on boot)

Couldn't do that anymore as I have sent in the unit to a service center.

I never saw the F1 option after the ThinkPad splash screen once this T60 started misbehaving.

I am really hoping this points to a system board problem rather than a crashed hard drive.........

SpawnyWhippet wrote:Most of my newer Lenovos including T60 and 3000's won't get past the BIOS splash screen if there are any USB or firewire devices connected. ...

My T60P (model 2007) boots OK with an Adaptec PCMCIA USB/FireWire card connected to an Adaptec External FireWire drive (drive is turned ON before booting)

ErnestG

Well, this may not be as bad as it might have been.

The service center called me back this morning that they believe it's the palm rest that is causing the problem, I almost laughed out loud thinking how could a piece of plastic cause this problem, especially when they explained to me that the laptop does boot properly without the palm rest.......

That is until they explained to me that the fingerprint reader is part of the palm rest, and they have ordered the replacement palm rest which "should" be in on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday here).

So, hopefully they are right, I feel much better now that they said the laptop does boot without the palm rest!

I will remain cautiously optimistic until I get the computer back.

Given the latest information on the palm rest being the culprit, it is probably a coincidence, but my T-60 (also a 8744-5BU) also failed early this week, and is currently in for a new system board. I purchased this machine from Lenovo Canada in April.

In my case, it's pretty clear that the issue was caused by a failed BIOS update. I ran System Update 3 (under Vista) on Monday evening while docked, and a BIOS update was included in the list of updates. During the install phase of the BIOS update, I received an error of the form "Could not load driver" (or somesuch).

I didn't think too much of it, since at that point I remembered the machine was docked; so I undocked, and ran the SU3 again. This time, the BIOS update got further, but hung, with the progress UI showing that it was about to back up the existing BIOS. After waiting for 10 minutes or so with it hung, I shut down, figuring that it should be safe, since the UI hadn't actually backed up the old BIOS yet.

At which point I was dead in the water; machine never booted again. Turning on power would flash the usual indicator lights, and the optical drive would spin, but the LCD would never turn on, and no attempt to boot would occur.

Now, I'm not sure, but I dimly recall that the SU3 was trying to install BIOS 2.16. However, the latest BIOS for the widescreen versions seems to be 1.11. But I really can't be certain, and of course, with the machine currently defunct, I can't check any logs or history. This new BIOS was just made available last week.

Anyway, I have the machine into the local business partner, and they have a new system board on order; it'll be fixed under warranty. They expressed surprise to find that it's a two week back-order for this model. Hmm.

So.... having owned a variety of ThinkPads since 1994, and never having had any BIOS update issues perhaps made me a little too cavalier about these updates. I expect I'll be a little more paranoid going forward -- especially under Vista, which seems to pose additional complications for the "live running OS" BIOS update method.

Back to using my trusty A30p for now.

wow, I am in Italy and so it isn't so easy to get the computer fixed, expecially since the whole country is on vacation for the next month. I was able to start the computer but now I am afraid to shut it down. Did the IBM's repairs guys tell you more. Should I turn off the fingerprint reader in the meanwhile until I can send it to get repaired or can I just have them send me not palm rests? Thanks in advance!

ayja wrote:wow, I am in Italy and so it isn't so easy to get the computer fixed, expecially since the whole country is on vacation for the next month. I was able to start the computer but now I am afraid to shut it down. Did the IBM's repairs guys tell you more. Should I turn off the fingerprint reader in the meanwhile until I can send it to get repaired or can I just have them send me not palm rests? Thanks in advance!

If you tell them it's the Palm rest they will ship you one. It is a customer replaceable unit. (CRU) You'd better be sure that is it though ... disconnect it first before calling. Then reboot several times. If it now works then you have a way to accurately describe the symptom and the exact fix to the maintenance folks.

Can some direct me on how to disconnect the finger printer reader? Thanks!

Read the hardware maintenance manual.

T-60 Maintenance Manual

Hmm, very interesting.
So the splash screen with the Thinkpad name, Intel and Lenovo and "To interrupt..." looks completely normal, not garbled, etc.?

If yes, and if nothing happens when you press the ThinkVantage button, it means that the very first sector of the master boot record (MBR) at the harddrive is deleted/garbled/overwritten.

When it never boots windows or anything else, my guess is that it is because the MBR is damaged, and the disk doesn't know what to do/boot.
It could have happened when you manually turned off the T60, because the heads do not park automatically.

As you can't get into ThinkVantage either, you're probably doomed if you also use the OEM Windows that it came with.
If you have a WinXP CD, insert it, and it will boot from the CD.
Go to the recovery consolde, enter your admin password, and use the command "fixmbr".
This will rewrite the MBR, but NOT the thinkvantage functionality.

I can't tell if the Rescue and Recovery disk sets can help you, but it's worth a try, if nothing works.
Else, send it in.

EDIT: I misread the palmrest post of yours - it was the palmrest/FPR i see. Are they sure it wasn't just halfways connected to begin with? I.e. did they reseat it properly again, and retested?
I've removed my FPR lots of times, and it doesn't fit that snug in the socket really, and the cable is rather short...

trtyhurst,
I really hope that Lenovo has placed the BIOS EEPROM in a socket, so that it can be reprogrammed with the firmware using a dedicated chip programmer. The EEPROM isn't bad, it just needs to be reset and rewritten. With labor and such, itr would be no more than $10 at max. Instead they are replacing the system board for what? $600-$700 + labor ?

In that case i wouldn't call Lenovo "green" at all. I'd give them a moron award instead, if they decide not to socket a user programmable part.

For me, the laptop starts up after unplugging and taking out the battery, but only goes to the thinkpad splash screen. If I press f1 or thinkpad advantage button, I can see that the computer registers that I have pressed it but declaring on the screen that it is going to BIOS, however it shuts down immediately after that second. I will try detaching the palm rests however it that does work, I will have to send it in. Doe any one have experience sending laptops that were bought in the US to get serviced in Europe? My laptop is still under warranty. I am located in Italy. Thanks!

Depends on the exact type of machine model, however i believe 2007, 2008 does have worldwide warranty in any country, while 2623, 2613 and some others do not have warranty coverage outside America and select Asian and European countries.

What's your whole model name? 2007 and what more?

2007-93U

Nice T60p, and supported in Italy also:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... yle=lenovo

If they want to service it or not - i'm not sure, the different divisions of IBM/Lenovo do not agree about this. While some countries are pedantic about the machine must be purchased in the same country as it was sold, most don't care.
Also depends on if you live there, or is on a trip/vacation/meeting etc. i guess.
Call them, that wouldn't hurt.

Hey, Thanks all. I called the IBM here in italy and we carry it in to the local repair center. FYI, I did remove the palm rest and disconnectes the fingerprint reader and nothing new happened... I'll let you all know what they tell me...
ciao!

Well, I am glad to report that I am back in business now, the palm rest appeared to be the culprit, the new one arrived at the service center this morning and I got a phone call at 11:20am to come pick it up.

I am very impressed with how quickly this problem was diagnosed and rectified by NexInnovation on Explorer Drive near the Pearson Airport.