Thinkpads Forum

SnakeJW wrote:So I guess sending in the machine to the depot and having the motherboard replaced is the thing to do now.

I really don't know, I think it's too soon to say, my machine might crash again. SO FAR it's working good... but I would be lying if I said that I know it's fixed for sure. Plus, I'm just 1 person, you know the old saying, YMMV...

Hellbore wrote:I have my original T61P right here as well, so I can look at them side by side. I looked up the FRU on my original T61P (not the loaner) and it had the LG screen.

The LG screen has richer colors, but the Samsung is definitely brighter. Very noticeable to me.

that makes me glad i got the samsung.   thanks!

before you send the other one back, you might want to start a new thread with some comparison photos.   i'm sure a lot of people would be interested to see the differences.

tyito2000 wrote:Sounds like Hellbore got a special delivery from DHL on Sunday. Anyways, since Hellbore got his dream, I have deleted all of the messages and work I have done on this thread.

OMG... are you joking?

Hellbore wrote:Well, my new T61P arrived this weekend while I was out of town...

http://jerry.cleedo.com/shipment.jpg

I was out of town until this afternoon, they delivered it to the office where I work and the man-secretary signed for it.
BTW, I don't know why they sent it UPS, in the past my packages to and from them have been through DHL.
EDIT: wait no.. I think repair packages are through DHL, new orders come through UPS...right? I don't remember.

And yes I do need to take some screen comparison pictures.
IF Lenovo will let me keep the laptop a couple more days I will.
There are 3 here, the new one which is Samsung WSXGA+, the original which is LG WSXGA+, and the loaner which is WUXGA+ Samsung.

Hellbore wrote:

tyito2000 wrote:Sounds like Hellbore got a special delivery from DHL on Sunday. Anyways, since Hellbore got his dream, I have deleted all of the messages and work I have done on this thread.

OMG... are you joking?

HEY!!!

Am I just talking to myself here? Drop this now. I don't care who said what to whom when. Drop it.

Hellbore wrote:And yes I do need to take some screen comparison pictures.
IF Lenovo will let me keep the laptop a couple more days I will.
There are 3 here, the new one which is Samsung WSXGA+, the original which is LG WSXGA+, and the loaner which is WUXGA+ Samsung.

oh, i thought you had WUXGA.   either way, i'd still like to see the results.

also, just let tyito2000 go.   obviously he has retracted all of his statements so it's time for everyone to move on.

LoL, well, I just sent my Lenovo corporate sale representative an Email explaining the situation hoping he can help me to find out what's going on. We still have 10 laptops sales order placed and they will get a close inspection when they arrive in the warehouse. From the input of some many forum members, it is no doubt a hardware issues. I personally believe it has something to do with a bad batch of defecitve motherboards.

Ah...I just miss IBM so much. Thinkpad used to be legendary in build quality.

Sorry nonny...don't kill me... I'll be good now I swear.

Yeah I got the WSXGA+, I forgot to mention that earlier. I sort of wish I had paid a little more for the WUXGA+, it's kinda cool to have the higher resolution.

Before I purchased the laptop I was convinced by lots of people that WSXGA+ was the way to go for gaming, but I'm not really sure I understand why this is, when I was using the loaner laptop (WUXGA+) I simply turned the resolution down to WSXGA+ resolution, and it looked fine to me, I couldn't see any difference between that and WSXGA+, so it seems to me like you might as well get WUXGA+ and just lower the resolution whenever appropriate. But I could be missing something. I guess you ideally should run an LCD at its native resolution right? I dunno it looks fine to me either way.

Anyways that's one thing I'll miss about the loaner, the higher resolution screen was kind of nice for work stuff.

it's best to run at native resolution.   i got WUXGA just because i was used to UXGA and didn't want to give up having 1200 vertical pixels for pallets in illustrator, photoshop, lightroom, autocad, etc.   plus, if i ever get any HD movies, they can play in full 1920x1080 resolution.

i'll take my WUXGA over your T7800.

focus people, focus

Just read something on notebookreview.com, it looks like the depot is unreliable. I will call them and ask them send somebody over to my office with new motherboard and fix it here while having my IT staff supervising. I will provide coffee.

HellBore, good to know your new T61p is working out for you. Now the question is, How do I get my same issue to fix? Should I send in my laptop and see what happens? or wait until Lenovo has a solution?

generalsu wrote:HellBore, good to know your new T61p is working out for you. Now the question is, How do I get my same issue to fix? Should I send in my laptop and see what happens? or wait until Lenovo has a solution?

I checked a few other forums, basically, some people are having horrible experience with the depot. Parts get lost/broken, delayed service, unfriendly representatives, just to name a few. There are some people are pretty happy with the service. In the end, it all depends on your luck.

I ran burnin test 3D test 11 times at full resolution (1920x1080) and no crashes, safe to say mine is alright.

My T61p was manufactured 10/18/07, model 6457AN2, if that helps any.

Hellbore wrote:
The LG screen has richer colors, but the Samsung is definitely brighter. Very noticeable to me.

The LG has a more blueish cast to it, the samsung when I turn the brightness down has a more yellowish cast to it. Interesting...

At any rate, I think in all honesty the LG screen has richer more vibrant colors, but this Samsung is brighter and I can read it easier. I think the LG colors are almost too saturated, maybe not quite realistic.

I know this is a little off topic but I found one can make the Samsung screen colors much richer and more vibrant by changing the default color profile. There are several preconfigured profiles besides the default IBM one already set up in the machine to choose from. The one I am liking now is in the WCS section. I have no idea what WCS means but to me the display looks better with it and colors are more saturated. Not sure if they are accurate however.

Also, fwimbw, everytime I fired up Photoshop CS3 with the default IBM/Lenovo profile enabled, PS gave a warning that there was a problem with the profile. With the WCS profile set as default, PS issues no more warnings.

I played through Crysis on my T61p with 2 GB RAM at 1280x800 and medium-high settings without any problems. I'm using ForceWare 156.83 drivers originally released by Lenovo but downloaded from laptopvideo2go.com. I don't know what all the fuss about graphics problems is about, it works fine for me.

Estrogen Kid wrote:I played through Crysis on my T61p with 2 GB RAM at 1280x800 and medium-high settings without any problems. I'm using ForceWare 156.83 drivers originally released by Lenovo but downloaded from laptopvideo2go.com. I don't know what all the fuss about graphics problems is about, it works fine for me.

How many memory modules do you have installed? one or two?

I have 2 sticks of 1 GB, and I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 with the latest updates and hotfixes. No problems with gaming so far.

Estrogen Kid wrote:I have 2 sticks of 1 GB, and I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 with the latest updates and hotfixes. No problems with gaming so far.

I guess you are among the lucky ones.

I'm yet another one of the unlucky ones with video problems on the T61p.

When I first received my notebook I thought the erratic shutdowns and freezes with the games were overheating issues. Then next I blamed it on Windows Vista 64bit which was the preinstalled OS. Since then I reinstalled Vista 32-bit, only to see it happen again. Next I blamed it on the Turbo memory. That wasn't the issue at all as it does the same thing with it disabled and multiple versions of the intel driver. Next I blamed it on the nVidia driver. After installing 5 different versions of the nVidia driver I merely blamed it on the game I was trying to play. Then it started happening more and more and any of the games I played. Particularly the newer games such as Crysis, UT3 and BioShock.

I spent hours on Sunday trying to remedy the problem of my computer randomly shutting down, freezing or returning to the desktop with the error message of my video driver crashing while running the 3d.

Then I searched specifically for problems related to video and the T61p. So I stumbled upon this forum. Then I read about using only one stick of memory. So I tried that, and to my amazement everything worked perfect for me.

However that isn't acceptable. Mainly because I didn't buy 4gb of memory for nothing.

So I called lenovo and they told me they've heard about the problem and are working very hard to fix it. In the mean time he's sending me a box so it can be returned to be fixed.

If this fixes it great! However I would like to know what the problem is. The Lenovo guy on the phone hinted around that it may be a bad Dimm slot.

Either way my fingers are crossed....
Sigh, it's going to be a very long time without my laptop.

SnakeJW wrote:

Estrogen Kid wrote:I have 2 sticks of 1 GB, and I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 with the latest updates and hotfixes. No problems with gaming so far.

I guess you are among the lucky ones.

I just called lenovo arranging a onsite repair. To my surprise, the person who answered my call is pretty friendly. I explained the problem and told him what I've found on the forum. He's arranging a technician to come out and have my motherboard replaced. However, he said it will take a few days as he doesn't want them to bring the same board as the one in my machine and suggested me to wait for a revised board, I agreed.

Hopefully this will get this problem fix once and for all. I will keep you guys updated about how it turn out.

Did you have onsite warranty service or are they giving you onsite for this as a special accomodation?

pae77 wrote:Did you have onsite warranty service or are they giving you onsite for this as a special accomodation?

Yeah, I purchased the onsite warranty just in case.

I've been followed this thread religiously since I received my laptop 28 days ago. It explained the issues I have had since I received it. I do not play much with gaming, but use it mostly for biz with dual video and mobile usage. Many times, the system refuses to display anything after coming back from sleep mode or to my external LCD. Many other times, it just locked up. I just have the Vista Ultx32, O2k7,Norton AV, full ThinkVantage and some other software.

Yesterday, I finally had an error message from Vista saying my "Video hardware error" I called and being told to ship my laptop in for repair.

I'm crossing my finger hoping that this will be fixed.

Yet another person with the same exact problem.

I have the C2Duo 7250(2.0) processor, 2 one gig sticks of lenovo ram, 100 gig 7200 rpm HD, Nvidia quadro fx 570m T61p workstation.

While running games that are 3d intensive such as Call of Duty 4, Half Life 2 and its various mods I have experienced 3 different types of problems.

The machine will power off after a short time of playing, it can go to the blue screen and begin a physical memory dump, or it will simply freeze.

I have updated all I can, whether it be bios or otherwise, and have tried a number of different drivers. The current video driver I am using is the driver optimized for the 8600 GT, and surprisingly I can play games longer without crash after I changed to this driver.

I contacted Lenovo about this problem, and the first tech I talked to said I needed to simply get something that works for me. He explained that with my basic warranty(even though I only received my model yesterday) they could not replace the mobo if it was faulty during 3d graphics since the computer was stable otherwise. Now when I order a workstation that is designed for graphic rendering/etc I expect it to be able to do that task, but according to him unless it always malfunctioned then it was my problem, and I should either return it or just use 1 memory stick since replacing the mobo thats only faulty when running 3d graphics wasnt in my warranty.

Now thankfully I called back and got another tech who I explained the same problem to. He had a very different response and is sending me a box so hopefully I can get it fixed in a timeframe thats not horrid, and hopefully it will be fixed when I receive it. I can only hope that its either fixed or available to send back for a refund before my trial period of I think 21 days is over. Only having the computer for 2 days its a bit disappointing to already be worrying about whether i will get it fixed in time or whether I will be able to return it and not be stuck with an inordinately expensive web browser.

What is happening to lenovo? The problem seems wide-spread for me, and I just wonder if they will do a product recall if it gets out of hands.

tom2517 wrote:I ran burnin test 3D test 11 times at full resolution (1920x1080) and no crashes, safe to say mine is alright.

My T61p was manufactured 10/18/07, model 6457AN2, if that helps any.

Did you buy yours from Lenovo.com or from a retail store? Your model number seem to suggest that it's not Custom to order.

SnakeJW wrote:What is happening to lenovo? The problem seems wide-spread for me, and I just wonder if they will do a product recall if it gets out of hands.

Hello SnakeJW,

I wonder if you have ever performed a chkdsk operation using the /F /R flags and completed successfully.

whenever I do so, invariably at 60 minutes into the check the system stops responding and it requires a power reset.

I believe this is a separate issue.

andrea

abarbieri wrote:

SnakeJW wrote:

I haven't noticed that yet since I just got this laptop and it's brand new. And I think it's separate from the graphic problem that everyone is having. Do you want me to run it and tell you the results?

Estrogen Kid wrote:I played through Crysis on my T61p with 2 GB RAM at 1280x800 and medium-high settings without any problems. I'm using ForceWare 156.83 drivers originally released by Lenovo but downloaded from laptopvideo2go.com. I don't know what all the fuss about graphics problems is about, it works fine for me.

When did you buy the laptop?

SnakeJW wrote:

abarbieri wrote:

yes, I do understand it is a different problem. my T61p is also quite recent (less than a month old) and similar to yours (6459CTO but WUXGA and only T7700).

It would be very useful if you could perform the test and see what happens. I have the same Seagate 160GB HDD.

many thanks
andrea