Thinkpads Forum

Well, I thought I was in the clear but my T61P started crashing after some time in several 3d games after I added another stick of RAM. I guess it's off to the depot.

Hi All,

After the depot changed the planar card on my T61P, I am puzzled with testing software such as pc wizard and cpuz.

Both tools consider my processor a T7700, but frequencies vary from 2400 to 2600 !!

pc wizard says the following :

Processor : core 2 duo T7700
estimated model T7800
Estimated frequency : 2600 mhz



Do you think that it's really a T7800 that they put on the planar card, if so how is it that on the bios it states T7700.

Any idea.

thanks

Ok, here is something new.
I ran the system update today and one of the updates is a newer version of PC Doctor 5 for windows. So I gave it a try, and about 20 or so mins into the video card test, the thing power off again. I would like to hear what the tech suporrt will say this time. They can't use that " if you passed the PC doctor test then it's not a hardware issue" as excuse anymore I guess.

I don't quite catch which part of the test cause the machine to shutdown, I think it's the "GPU Pipeline data test". All I remember it's a test with two pipes at the end and in the middle there were some green lines flashing, then it went dark. The whole thing just died. It has become somewhat unstable during the lighting test already.

I hope this could be helpful to Lenovo engineers in pin pointing the problem and finding a solution. But if it's indeed a hardware issue, I guess me and those unlucky ones will have no choice but have it fixed by lenovo.

Amazingly, I did not find a hint of this graphics problem on the first forum I have been monitoring:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2

But, from this thread, this looks like a major unresolved and critical issue.

I had just ordered my new T61p which has not arrived yet.....and had hoped to use it some % of the time with gaming.

Any resolution in sight for this issue yet?

Thanks,

Alacrity

alacrityathome wrote:Amazingly, I did not find a hint of this graphics problem on the first forum I have been monitoring:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2

There are several I know of:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=179172

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=181232

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=176942

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=134725

Hellbore wrote:There are several I know of:

Hellboro, can you PM be back about the 1GB DIMM we used to help troubleshoot this problem?


Barry

Daniel wrote:Well, I thought I was in the clear but my T61P started crashing after some time in several 3d games after I added another stick of RAM. I guess it's off to the depot.

Strange replying to my own post but I've confirmed the problem. I had a 2GB + 1GB (factory). I removed the 1GB, moved the 2GB into the original spot and was able to run completely stable all day. It's definitely an issue with running two sticks whether the sticks are the same size or not.

Hellbore wrote:There are several I know of:

Thanks for the thread info. Yes, some of the thread titles did not grab my attention. Example: Who has 4 gigs of RAM in their T61P?

But that thread had oddles of useful info in it.

Hellbore, I think Lenovo should hire you as the Customer Service Manager to pull that group together.

Alacrity

I'd posted earlier about the shutdown after a short time of running 3D applications. I tried removing the topmost 1 GB DIMM in my machine (of two), and the following day my notebook ran the whole time flawlessly in a 12 hour LAN party.

Unfortunately, it's only a workaround, and I don't know if I totally trust the depot repair...so I really don't know what to do about it

Uodnelome wrote:I'd posted earlier about the shutdown after a short time of running 3D applications. I tried removing the topmost 1 GB DIMM in my machine (of two), and the following day my notebook ran the whole time flawlessly in a 12 hour LAN party.

Unfortunately, it's only a workaround, and I don't know if I totally trust the depot repair...so I really don't know what to do about it

So far I am not happy with the depot, i sent my machine in and they have had it for around 9 business days now. They replaced the motherboard, harddrive, and ram but still are having errors, so all I can assume is that the motherboard used as a replacement was defective as well. I was also angered to hear that there is superficial damage to the exterior of my laptop as well now, even though I shipped it in pristine condition. Suffice it to say I am getting rather angry about this whole situation.

Just to confirm that the depot is unreliable.
After getting back my t61P with a new planar card, turbo memory and bluetooth are missing.

I wonder if they just forgot them on the old motherboard ...
As an answer they told me that these items are supposed to be embedded and for me no way to get them after installing the drivers ... very tricky situation.

I'm sorry to hear they shipped your laptop back missing the turbo memory and bluetooth.

When you sent it in to the depot, did you make sure to write those items on the list of computer parts?

You were supposed to write down all the specs of your computer before sending it in, maybe if you forgot to write turbo memory and bluetooth on the list, they thought you didn't have it before. Just an idea.

When I sent mine to the depot I made sure to write down every part and when the depot sent it back, nothing was missing.

hi Hellboy,

I think you're right, I did not mention anything before sending it to the depot because I thought that as long as the model 64575GG is mentioned these items are supposed to be known by them.

Why I think the depot guys are not that serious is that they keep telling me they don't know since turbo memory and bluetooth are embedded in the planar card, which I think is wrong but I may be mistaken.

akim wrote:hi Hellboy,

I think you're right, I did not mention anything before sending it to the depot because I thought that as long as the model 64575GG is mentioned these items are supposed to be known by them.

Why I think the depot guys are not that serious is that they keep telling me they don't know since turbo memory and bluetooth are embedded in the planar card, which I think is wrong but I may be mistaken.

Yeah if they are telling you that then they are wrong, bluetooth and turbo memory are both little cards that plug into the motherboard and are held on with screws. You have to at least remove the keyboard to get access to install them, maybe more, I don't remember. They will probably tell you to send the laptop back to the depot to install the missing parts, just a guess.

I thought the bluetooth card was in the display assembly. Did that change from the T60 to the T61 model?

akim wrote:Just to confirm that the depot is unreliable.
After getting back my t61P with a new planar card, turbo memory and bluetooth are missing.

I wonder if they just forgot them on the old motherboard ...
As an answer they told me that these items are supposed to be embedded and for me no way to get them after installing the drivers ... very tricky situation.

akim, Mine was shipped in 2 weeks ago. Today, I just being told that MY LAPTOP IS MISSING.
I can't believe what I have heard. Yet again, they told me to call them back.

akim wrote:Just to confirm that the depot is unreliable.
After getting back my t61P with a new planar card, turbo memory and bluetooth are missing.

I wonder if they just forgot them on the old motherboard ...
As an answer they told me that these items are supposed to be embedded and for me no way to get them after installing the drivers ... very tricky situation.

[/u]

I can see that some cases are worse than mine

In fact the main reason why I originally sent the t61p to the depot was on account of the lcd which included some issues (samsung LT154U2-L05)
And as long as it was to be retained at the depot and I notified Lenovo about the graphic issue we all have on the model with 4go of ram. So there were two rma , one for the lcd and one for the planar card.

After 6 days, only the planar was replaced and after calling them they just sent me a lcd at my customer's location where I work at without any guy to install it.

That's little funny. What am I supposed to do, install it by myself.
If case something goes wrong should I install it by myself they could merely say Ok, that's your fault and void the warranty.

This is the first time I come across such problems and it's pity and a shame for a company who's supposed to address professional.

Even if I like my T61P, the depot is unreliable which make me regret Dell since in case of a problem, they just send a guy who's doing the job just before you, no surprise...

Well you could have paid (and still could pay) a little extra to upgrade the warranty to "on site" service if you are so displeased with the depot. With the on site warranty, you get the guy (or girl) coming to your location to make the repair in front of you.

this is what I did but the problem now is that you can only purchase on site warranty 30 days after purchase which is no longer the case for me.

I am waiting Lenovo to take a stand on whether they accept my suscribing to onsite warranty even if the T61p is almost 4 month's old now.

Thanks for this piece of advice.

This may be a stupid question, however I can't seem to find the answer...

How do I change the test resolution in BurnIn Test? It seems to run fine at the default resolution, however, the default resolution is around 180x180. edit: i'm running the "standard trial" version

None the less, at that resolution, the 3d test at 100 seems to run fine without crashing. How long should I run the test for to verify if my t61p has the graphics issue?

I am pretty sure the build date is 11/29 (according to add/remove programs, that's when all the lenovo software was installed), I recieved it today.

T7500
570m graphics
2x1gb ram
wuxga display
type 6460-67u

I can run DOOM 3 with no issue at ultra settings, 1600x1200 res.

edit2: I read here that someone could not successfully complete the PC Doctor v. 5 video test. I just successfully completed it. 100% across the board. 3dmark06 is up next.

edit3: Successfully completed 3dmark06, with a score of 3838, however I had a few programs open as I was more interested in whether or not the system would crash under load. Does this mean I'm out of the woods?

Side note about the Service depot:
I also have a t41p which has been in for repairs numerous times. As stated in this thread, it's really hit or miss with the rep who answers the phone. If you get a bad rep, simply accept their bs answer, and re-dial. I've been told I cannot have recovery disks for free, only to be then given recovery disks by the next rep who answered the phone minutes later.

Hellbore wrote:I'm sorry to hear they shipped your laptop back missing the turbo memory and bluetooth.

When you sent it in to the depot, did you make sure to write those items on the list of computer parts?

You were supposed to write down all the specs of your computer before sending it in, maybe if you forgot to write turbo memory and bluetooth on the list, they thought you didn't have it before. Just an idea.

When I sent mine to the depot I made sure to write down every part and when the depot sent it back, nothing was missing.

The serial number of the system should be enough for the engineers to check what parts were included with the system you bought. That is to say if you did include the serial number.

Pocket Aces wrote:

nurio wrote:The fog problem sounds like a driver issue, not necessarily a Vista problem.
Just to confirm, were you able to find the both fixes (938194 and 938979) on Windows update?

If you want to get a more recent NVIDIA driver installed on your system, you might want to check this link:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/ind ... owforum=72
I believe that what they do, is take the original NVIDIA drivers and modify the installer inf file to support other cards such as the 570m.

Keep in mind neither NVIDIA nor Lenovo support these drivers!

The 570M doesn't seem to appear on the list of supported cards.

Hey guys,

Just letting you know that the drivers at our site, www.laptopvideo2go.com, do not fully support the ThinkPad line of machines.

On a side note: I personally, want to get a 14.1" T61 with the Quadro 570 card so I can start writing drivers for them again

generalsu wrote:The serial number of the system should be enough for the engineers to check what parts were included with the system you bought. That is to say if you did include the serial number.

That's fine in theory, IF they bothered to look up the serial number of every laptop they repair and check all the parts that it is supposed to have. I don't know if they do that, but what I do know is that when you send your laptop to the depot for repair, the box you get has a paper that specifically instructs you to list the parts and features that are in your system so they don't make a mistake like this. If you choose to disregard these instructions then you're just rolling the dice.

Also, when you send your laptop to the repair depot, it is not going to be repaired by engineers, it will be repaired by the first-level repair guys. Only escpecially difficult cases get escalated to an engineer.

reading this entire thread, good detective work, or better only slob engineers/testers do not stumble across this. its just arrogant letting consumers do the product testing (be it any hardware or software). They should reimburse you for your time and troubles alerting these people who would rather sweep it under the rug.

so mine arrived 2 days ago, and its still sealed and it will go back straight to lenovo for a full refund, as I do not accept a defective product from a company that claims to be premium brand.
a brand new top of the line product where the main part, the mobo (some call it planar) does not work: who can get by with this.
I dont want to risk to throw in more time dealing with depot repair.
maybe later when this has been cleared here in front of everyone, I may reorder.

thanks for everyones time and perceptiveness, from my side

toby909 wrote:snipped

jumping the gun a little bit are we?

A lot of times with the internet, people who have issues post about them, and those who do not have issues do not chime in. When dealing with mass production, errors do occur, and in light of that, due to the consolidation of complaints on the internet, the defects seem to get amplified, and seem far more widespread than reality.

Wouldn't you think that if this was an extremely widespread issue, Lenovo would issue some sort of recall? Simply put, they didn't issue a recall because the issue was not widespread enough. IMO this is due to a batch issue, seemingly on the planar card. The fact that the issue is being resolved on peoples machines points even further in this direction.

It's your decision whether or not to return your laptop, without even so much as checking to see if yours is effected by the defect. To each their own. I guess some of us like to live a little bit more dangerously.

I am able to run World of Warcraft with 60-63 FPS in a main city with no problem for 30 minutes of just running around in it, which is where you will see most of your dropped frames in that game. I also tested it at with EVERYTHING at max included 8x Anti-Aliasing and it dropped to 30-35FPS, but it still did not lock up. I have also completed 3DMark a few times without problems. Finally I have run PC Doctor Video test without any issues.

Build date - 11/30/07
BIOS - 7LET56WW - 10/18/07
NVIDIA Driver - 7.15.11.155 from 7/27/07
RAM - 4Gigs, 2x 2GB Sticks
Processor - T7700 2.4GHz
OS - Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit

If you need any other info I am willing to help all that are having issues. I will try games like Doom3, Command and Conquer 3, etc. when I get a chance. This is my work machine so I cannot get game happen on it.

lbraasch wrote:snipped

I agree with lbraasch, this problem doesn't seem to affect ALL T61P's after all, you could at least check your unit out before returning it, it might be perfectly fine.

I just got my system back with a new motherboard. They also replaced my memory sticks with these new single stack memory. What are those? I was planning to use them with my older 2GB double stack memory stick for a 3GB total.

toby909 wrote:reading this entire thread, good detective work, or better only slob engineers/testers do not stumble across this. its just arrogant letting consumers do the product testing (be it any hardware or software). They should reimburse you for your time and troubles alerting these people who would rather sweep it under the rug.

so mine arrived 2 days ago, and its still sealed and it will go back straight to lenovo for a full refund, as I do not accept a defective product from a company that claims to be premium brand.
a brand new top of the line product where the main part, the mobo (some call it planar) does not work: who can get by with this.
I dont want to risk to throw in more time dealing with depot repair.
maybe later when this has been cleared here in front of everyone, I may reorder.

thanks for everyones time and perceptiveness, from my side

Hey Toby,

I am right around the corner from you in N. CA. You have to come over and see my new T61p in a couple of days.

I was wondering if you were ordering a 2nd T61p since your signature showed SUSE 64 o/s. Or, was your 2nd PC coming with SUSE installed on it? I didn't see that o/s alternative on the order sheet at Lenovo

Thanks,

Alacrity

Just to reiterate what Snakejw said earlier, here's a really good test: If you don't have PC Doctor 5 from Lenovo, get it through Thinkvantage update or here's a link:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-67520

This version has a cool video test that will test your 3D graphics! If you can run this test a few times without crashing, you probably are in the clear... maybe...

It would be great if a few of the people who are still having this issue could try running this PC Doctor video card test and see if you pass it! This might be an easier (and free) way to identify what machines have this problem.