T61 Nvidia Graphic Card dieing? Or LCD? Help please

[tok]

Hello,
my T61 laptop has been working perfectly until yesterday, when Vista notified that the graphic card stopped responding but it resumed. It also notified me of "new" monitor found, when there was no monitor attached. I ignored the issue, thinking that a system restart would solve the issue. I continued working for several hours, and turned off the machine when finished.
Now, when I restarted the system today, everything that was displayed on the LCD was corrupted, but still kinda legible.... I am not sure how to describe this, but it's like the lcd divided in 2 parts, one mirroring each other, with some strange corrupted half orange / half black background. After Vista started initializing, the LCD would just turn black and the system would hang.
I attached an external monitor, and reset the machine. To my surprise, I could actually see everything on the external monitor and it booted into Vista (the LCD would stay black though). A message came up again saying that the graphic card stopped responding but it resumed. After that the system just froze.
Finally, I rebooted and entered Vista "safe mode", changed the graphic driver to "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" and after restarting I can work on my machine, but only by using the external monitor (LCD would still be corrupted). Right now I am typing on this forum using the laptop / external monitor / standard vga driver combination.

Is my graphic card dead? Is the LCD screen dead? What's going on? My laptop is out of warranty now, so I would appreciate any help or advice!!

Thanks in advance

~ Steve

[Sotmg]

Is it still the same when you boot some live-cd linux distro? if yes then it might be hardware problem, else it is just a windows problem.

I am not an expert but you could try that till someone replys to you with a fix.

[Brad]

I have seen this before and after replacing the motherboard all was ok.

Brad

[tok]

Thanks for the replies.

There has been a new development... This morning I tried switching back to the NVIDIA drivers, and everything is working fine on the external monitor, including 3D applications. Now I am thinking that it may be the LCD that is bad.

Is there some guide that I could follow to check if the LCD is properly connected?

Thanks

[sktn77a]

Can you boot into the BIOS/ThinkVantage (blue button) screens on your internal display?

[tok]

Can you boot into the BIOS/ThinkVantage (blue button) screens on your internal display?

I can, but the screen is all corrupted/flickering even in the BIOS.

[sktn77a]

Well, if it works just fine on the external monitor, it doesn't sound like your graphics card (despoite what the computer told you). Sounds like the LCD/inverter/cable. Get the hardware manual from the Lenovo site, remove the keyboard and plamrest and re-seat the graphics cable/inverter.

[ajkula66]

The fact that the machine works well on the external monitor does not mean that the graphic card is OK.

There are two separate outputs from the GPU, digital for the LCD and analog for the external monitor. One can work perfectly well while the other one is completely shot, I've seen it quite a few times.

As I've stated on Lenovo's forum, OP is looking at a motherboard replacement.

[HayLo]

Just curious, ran into a bad GPU on a t61 about a month ago, notice quite a few others on the forums as well.

Is there a reason this is failing. The old t40 issue was European led conversion.

Just curious why this is happening, lenovo/ibm is usually pretty good about fixing issues like like that.

Thanks

PS, we contract our t40 boards out to a company that has an xray and can re soldier them. I'm going to have to check into whether or not they can do n140 yet.

[ajkula66]

The issue with nVidia GPUs can't be solved by re-balling/re-flowing the solder. The problem is not the connection, as it was on A3x/T4x/R5x ATi-based units, but in the chip itself, which manufacturer admits is defective and prone to overheating to death, amongst other things...

[gsl007]

Are the problems with the 570 card or the 140, or both?

[ajkula66]

Both.

[johnvndnbrk]

There has been a new development... This morning I tried switching back to the NVIDIA drivers, and everything is working fine on the external monitor, including 3D applications. Now I am thinking that it may be the LCD that is bad ...

Hi Tok,

If you have a T61(p) you most likely have the nVidia Quadro FX 570M graphics card. Unfortunately, these fall into a batch of defective video cards (nVidia has others as well) and nVidia is being tight lipped about it - understandibly. Although your card may "appear" to be OK again, it is unlikely that it is and you will most likely notice degradation over a short period of time until you system does not recognize the card at all (at this point you will see nothing and your notebook with beep 3 times at you).

This is NOT a Lenovo/Thinkpad specific issue. For those who are going to junk your Thinkpad and trust in Lenovo and go with a different company, I understand your frustration but DELL, HP, Toshiba notebooks are experiencing the same problems with nVidia. Our only hope is that there will be a recall on these. After I spoke with a support representative he said that if enough issues are reported this "may" happen. This comment was from a very nice guy who has heard his share of out-of-warranty customers like ourselves in this predicament, but his hands are tied.

I hope that there would be a recall and if you google nVidia you'll see there are many other graphics cards that have apparently failed due to what nVidia press is saying are heat related issues. This may very well be the case but how this would get them off the hook is not clear to me. It might not be a bad idea to shut of Windows Vista Aero or revert back to WinXP, if this is an option for you since it may reduce stress causing failure on these video cards. Perhaps, you'll buy enough time to let this unfold to the point that recalls are offered. Otherwise, plan to spend between $500 to $700 to have this fixed since, as noted, the mother board needs to be replaced.

Good luck and hang in their with Lenovo ... I believe they will do what's within their power to help us and I still believe thay are the best notebook manufacturer w/out question!

John

[pianoforte]

I recently bought a 14" SXGA+ T61p with discrete NVidia Graphics and so far it runs cooler than my brother´s T60p with ATI graphics (which is actually the noisiest Thinkpad I ever saw). My Nvidia 8800 GT in my desktop (of course not comparable but in the same GPU "family") is even cooled passively by air.

Your comments on the NVidia Cards in the T61 shocked me quite a bit so I read the T6x section back to page 9 but didnt find a single complaint on the Nvidia graphic cards related to overheating.

Is there any official statement on this by nvidia?

Best regards, Jan.

[bhtooefr]

Just look up nVidia G84 and G86 failures.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... 84-g86-bad

It burned pretty much every laptop manufacturer using nVidia graphics. Lenovo's response was to switch back to ATI for the current models. Some manufacturers stuck with nVidia, and I believe Apple is still having a high failure rate even on the latest nVidia GPUs.

[johnvndnbrk]

...Is there any official statement on this by nvidia? Best regards, Jan.

Hi Jan,

There is a statement from nVidia, see second paragraph of this article: http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html

The noted article by The Inquirer, http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... 84-g86-bad. And what appears to be a follow-up to this article on Tom's Hardware, http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia ... ,5815.html.

On the other hand, I must admit that it is rather confusing. The reason I find this so is that nVidia does not say what cards are defective in their announcement, they have changed from their initial stance of HP only computer's being affected to include DELL, and a pretty confident and tacit response by The Inquirer - who appear to be a bit tough and loose with their assertions. I added Tom's Hardware to provide a bit more credibility to this, but I cannot find the link from the G84/G86 back to the T61p nVidia Quadro 570m graphics card. I had this link but lost the article relating the two.

What I can say is that there seems to be a very high volume of complaints by owners of T61 notebooks having graphics related issues. This is also vague ... and the issues range with some provided solutions, i.e. upgrading RAM, to some not having luck ever motherboards have been swapped. In hindsight I believe I was too sure it was all T61p nVidia graphic cards, which it may be but which I do not believe I have sufficient evidence or clarity to have made my previous comments.

I can say that I do own a T61p and am experiencing graphic problems, specifically, there are vertical lines showing thru Thinkpad text during boot up and I can only get 4bit 800x600 resolution. A clean install of either WinXP or WinVista show these same characteristics, so it is not a driver issue. I am not a "gamer" but I had been using WinVista x64 which stresses out the graphics and other components more than WinXP - this I merely base on the heat gen'd from using WinVista having the notebook cut-out or power off w/o shut down a few times.

It would be helpful if anyone from Lenovo could shed some light on this. I feel I lumped all graphic issues on these notebooks into a single category with the cause being the faulty or defect design in nVidia's cards which are failing due to heat related flaws. Lenovo's forum also has information on this, but nothing I could find conclusive.

John

[bhtooefr]

Quadro FX 570M = G86
Quadro NVS 140M = G84

So, both discrete graphics cards in the T61/p are affected.

(edited to fix model number on the 140M)

[gsl007]

Oh, that's a shame. Then I'm pleased I have warranty. Are the discrete graphics changable or are they part of the mother board?

[ajkula66]

They are a part of the motherboard and therefore cannot be exchanged by themselves...