Issues with T61 LCD Garbled Display

[vduhan]

Hi,

I bought my Thinkpad T61 machine on 27th June 07 and my warranty has expired. Since past 1 month the display is not working properly. The screen display has deteriorated and garbled with Red/Green colors. Also, The screen display has split into 2 parts horizontally and I can see the same display in both screens.

Earlier I thought that my LCD screen went bad, but then I tried an external monitor and the it also showed up same kind of garbled display. So my LCD screen seems to be okay.

The display settings are also lost and i can not set my machine display beyond 640X480 anymore. I tried installing the latest graphics drivers from IBM website but that also didnt help.

Finally I decided to re-instate the factory settings to see if it helps. To my surprise, restoring to Factory settings helped and I could see the proper display. But it didnt last for long and within next 10 minutes, the display changed to the garbled screen.

At this point I'm really not sure what exactly is wrong with my Notebook. I want to know the root cause before sending it over to IBM guys for repair.

Can it be a virus issue?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Here is the link to the snapshots of my notebook screen:

http://picasaweb.google.com/duhan.vikas ... 9611384786

Thanks in advance!

My Notebook Specifications are:
Thinkpad T61
T7500 2.2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD, Nvidia Quadro 140 Graphics card.

Vikas

[SafeHarbor]

Hi, Vikas,

Is there any change if you tap on the side of the case. I'm suspecting something loose in there.

Lamar

[vduhan]

Hi,

I tried tapping on all the sides on the case ... didnt help ...
I'm not sure but I upgraded 1 RAM chip to 2GB from 1 GB. It worked fine for 1 month and then the display problem started.
Suspecting that It has something to do with RAM, I restored the 1 GB RAM stick.
I'm just curious if upgrading RAM led to the display issue.

Thanks,
Vikas

[ajkula66]

Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with RAM...

Your GPU has gone bad and the T61 in questions is in need of a new planar.

Shame that the warranty has expired...

Good luck.

[vduhan]

Thanks George!

I got your response on Lenovo forums! I know now that its my GPU which is causing problems and I will have to replace my Motherboard.

Only thing I'm concerned about is ... how come it started working fine for 10 minutes after I restored the factory default settings from IBM Lenovo.

Thanks,
Vikas

[ajkula66]

That's perfectly normal...nVidia card failures are heat-related, and it takes some time for the card to warm up and start failing...

FWIW, I've owned numerous older ThinkPads with ATi GPUs in various stages of failure that would run Linux OK 4 boots out of 5, but would start garbling screens within seconds in XP with proper drivers...