T60P with Windows 7 powers off randomly

[sean.melchionda]

Anyone running Windows 7 on their T60?

I had an old T60 work laptop lying around so I did a clean install of Windows 7 and MS Office 2007. The T60 works great, its much faster than the XP install that I had on it previsously... However when multitasking or watching videos it powers itself off with out warning. Its not shutting down, but rather acting like is suddenly lost power. When I restart the computer sometimes it hangs when Windows starts up so I wait a bit and them am able to restart. That behavior makes me think its got to be a heat problem, however it could also be a powersupply problem, or diskdrive problem. I had this happen to me on a desktop computer a while back and did a lot of trouble shooting with various diagnostic tools and never found the problem. I just ended up rebuilding the computer with a new power supply and better cooling and that fixed the problem. This T60 does seem to get hotter running windows 7 than it did running XP.. I'm thinking that may have something to do with the better utilization of the dual cores on the processor with Win7. Anyway...anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

[Vempele]

When I restart the computer sometimes it hangs when Windows starts up so I wait a bit and them am able to restart. That behavior makes me think its got to be a heat problem, however it could also be a powersupply problem, or diskdrive problem.

The PC Doctor bootable CD can tell you if/when the laptop has overheated. I think it's called System Events or something.

[sean.melchionda]

Ok... Ran PC Doctor tests and to my surprise the HD checked out fine. Also, everthing else passed except for one test, however I think that failure is related to the fact that I ran the test from the CD instead of a floppy.

In the Hardware Events menu I looked at the log and found a few references to temperature and fan... I'm not sure how to read this report...but just seeing these references make me think that temps are a problem. Also a few references to a battery charge problem.

Anyone know how to print the hardware report? It says printing is disabled and to enable it in the option menu... although I couldnt find the option menu.

So if temps are a problem I'll try to clean out the fan, however if that doesnt work is it possible to get a more powerful fan?

[GomJabbar]

Probably a problem with the fan. I had to get the fan replaced in my T42 for the same problem (well, it was under warranty, so I did not try to work on it myself). The service center replaced the motherboard first, but that didn't fix anything. I brought it back and they replaced the fan - problem solved.

See following thread for more info.
T60 goes off suddenly.

[sean.melchionda]

A few days ago I throttled back the CPU on the laptop to 90%. I also changed the fan profiles so that the fan increases speed before temps increase. This seems to have solved the problem as the laptop has not shut down. I've also not noticed a performance difference due to only running at 90%. I plan on slowly increasing the CPU back towards 100% if the laptop runs reliably for the next week or so.

[Rofflesaurrr]

When the laptop randomly shuts down, do you need to unplug it and plug it back in? I noticed when my T61 went into thermal protection mode, it would shut off and it wouldn't turn back on until I unplugged it. (The little a/c power LED on the screen would go out)

[Turboqueef]

I am running Windows 7 32bit on my T60P. I have run W7 with the stock processor (T2500) and am currently running it with the T7600 processor.

My system never shuts down but ... I did have an issue when I upgraded the processor. The system would lock up when ever I switched from battery to AC power (when the notebook was up and running).

I found the power management program and driver were out of date. NOTE: I had been using the ThinkVantage system updater but it was not offering the latest drivers. I had to input my system information to Lenovo driver support page and manually download and install them. (I found several out of date drivers).

So far, the driver update has worked.

Good luck

A few days ago I throttled back the CPU on the laptop to 90%. I also changed the fan profiles so that the fan increases speed before temps increase. This seems to have solved the problem as the laptop has not shut down. I've also not noticed a performance difference due to only running at 90%. I plan on slowly increasing the CPU back towards 100% if the laptop runs reliably for the next week or so.

[SHoTTa35]

Weird, could have sworn i replied to a thread like this before.

Anyways, on my old T60 i had the same issue with Vista. I concluded it was the system overheating (maybe i had a bad system also). I noticed that if the BIOS was set a certain way it would freeze at the startup logo after it crashed like that. I would have to wait for a few mins for it to cool down and then boot again (or take out the AC adapter).

The setting in the BIOS was the Intel Speedstep option, if it's set to balanced it would do that but Max Performance (AC section) would boot everytime.

I called Lenovo and they sent out a box to replace the mobo but i didn't test it when it came back to see if that was the fix required. I sold it less than 4hrs after it came back from them.

Here was the thread - not the same but maybe?
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=83122