T60p built-in Ethernet port has stopped working

[kchung]

Has anyone heard any reports of T60p built in Ethernet ports failing? My company has seen 4 T60p laptops have their built-in ethernet ports stop working BUT the Ethernet works fine when docked. All of these systems are about 18 months old and all 4 systems have failed in the past month.

The green connection light and yellow activity light on at least a two of the four laptops are lit/blinking.

-Kevin

[jimmy274]

I know it's a long shot, but maybe your company's router has a bad grounding and fries out the ports on laptops. Docking station has much better power handling than the laptop itself, so it could be that bad grounding has burned the decoupling caps on ground wires of the ethernet port. I've seen a lot of fuses die out on T4x because it's used on baterry + eth/parallel port plugged in, so this might be your answer. Also, RX/TX line activity is not affected by ground not present (with no ground present, computer sees thrash on eth port RX/TX lines, but still sees something).
So, either someone used battery powered laptop connected to eth ports (router grounding in this case doesn't affect anything, since laptop has a so-called "floating ground") or the router's grounding is bad...

[limpelephant]

I have a post open about a problem that sounds very similar.
T61's that have the Amber light constantly on and the hardware reporting that it's still functioning, until you plug an ethernet cord in and nothing happens.

[kchung]

FYI: In all the instances where this happened, we had to have the motherboard replaced. We have not heard of a re-occurance of the same problem on the laptops were repaired (yet).

[Marin85]

FYI: In all the instances where this happened, we had to have the motherboard replaced. We have not heard of a re-occurance of the same problem on the laptops were repaired (yet).

Thanks for the update! Your experience was actually quite worrying

Marin

[limpelephant]

I hate to burst your bubble, one of the two that i have currently experiencing this problem has already been repaired once, last summer, for this issue.

[kchung]

I hate to burst your bubble, one of the two that i have currently experiencing this problem has already been repaired once, last summer, for this issue.

Hmm... Are you running a Gigabit network with Power over Ethernet at your site? My company has informed Lenovo officially through our sales and technical representatives a week ago - they haven't come back with any information as of yet...

[limpelephant]

We're gigabit but not running PoE, not on the network they should be connected to at least. Now I may have to go check the switches that do have PoE devices running off of them to see if they are somehow connected to the other.

[limpelephant]

Still having to use the Port Replicator or USB dongles to get these machines connected to the LAN. So annoying, as i search this issue more across the web there are so MANY people with this problem and Lenovo has nothing to say about it. They blame our switches...... the machines are connected to different switches in different office buildings! why is it that only the T61's are failing?