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T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:11 am
by kd3yt1
Stepdaughter just called and stated she left her laptop in her car overnight and it was quite cold last night. She is going to law school in Vermont. When she turned it on, all she got was a series of 4 beeps - 4 beeps four times. Did the usual search on here and got a link to IBM showing what beep error codes means and it said this series of beeps are caused by "System Board (Security Chip)". Does this indicate the system board is fried or would it just be the Security Chip??
Re: T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:25 am
by richk
First, warm it up and try again. They don't like really cold (or hot). 4 sets of 4 beeps generally cannot be fixed. I would try to unplug it and remove the battery. (If you feel like removing the palmrest and keyboard, also disconnect the CMOS battery.) Push the power button several times (5???) holding it for 10 seconds on the last time. Hook it back up and try again.
Re: T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:37 am
by kd3yt1
Richk,
Thanks for the quick reply. Question: When you are pushing the power button, is this with the battery out and should it be plugged into the power adapter? Or no power at all when pushing button. I have to tell her to do these things by phone as she is 11 hours away!! I do not think she would be comfortable taking keyboard and palmrest out to get to cmos battery. I did suggest she have the college IT dept look at it on monday.
Re: T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:02 pm
by richk
No battery, no power. You are trying to completely drain everything of power for a full reset. The power button drains any capacitors which may be holding power.
Re: T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:35 pm
by kd3yt1
If the above does not work, could I get her back up if I talked her into disabling security chip in bios??
Re: T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 1:02 pm
by richk
No. 4 sets of 4 beeps = dead board
Re: T61 Won't boot and gives beep error
Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:55 am
by beeblebrox
richk wrote:No. 4 sets of 4 beeps = dead board
No, board ist ok.
You need to reset the security chip. Technically quite easy to do.
You can google for the schematics to build it yourself and download the software.
There are folks here on the forum who can do this too, but you should better provide some ID to show that you are the owner of the notebook. Same with professional firms. They will do it with a quick data logger, if you can prove ownership of the Thinkpad.