Thinkpads Forum

Had a bit of a scare this morning. After waking my T60p from hibernate and using it for about an hour I closed the lid and it went into standby. An hour later, I noticed that the moon icon light was out.

Imagine my surprise when I pressed the power button - no effect. I plugged in the power - no lights, no nothing!

I removed the battery and the hard drive and began dismantling: palmrest, keyboard. At that point, I plugged the power back in, and yes, the indicator lights were back. I put the keyboard back and pressed the power button. The start-up sequence was ok, but there was a cracking sound through the speakers, and that's the last sound I've heard.

After putting the HDD back, I'm now running my weekly HDD full image backup (which I always do on a Saturday) and I did the daily incremental file backup yesterday, so I'm not worried about losing any data.

As for the sound, could someone suggest a fault finding procedure to find out what's wrong and what needs to be replaced?

You could start by running PC-Doctor to see if it finds anything wrong.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 56222.html

Thanks, Harryc.

No, Pc-Doctor does not report any problems.

I checked the headphone audio, and there is audio but almost inaudible at the maximum volume setting.
Any thoughts?

Boot up a Linux Live CD and see if the problem carries over to Linux. Linux Mint is a good one because it will play MP3's out of the box.
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Burning the DVD now.

Weird, contrary to what I first reported, the audio jack does seem to be functioning at top level. I just can't push it all the way in, then the left audio drops away.

Mmm, no joy with linux. Couldn't get any sounds, not on the headphones either. Probably some audio driver missing?

Anyway, I'm fairly confident the speaker assebly is the culprit. I have another T60 standing by - acquired especially for these kind of emergencies. I've looked at the maintenance manual on how to remove it. There's some video around as well I think on how to strip a Thinkpad.

Audio should work on a T60P out of the box on Linux Mint, it does on mine. No additional driver is needed. It is looking like a hardware issue with the T60P.

Yeah, I think it does. Well, I've found the videos, I've got the two patients standing by.

I'm going in. Wish me luck.

Hmm, posting this from the donor T60, I've re-assembled it in the meantime.
The speaker assembly seems OK, oddly enough.

So it's probably the mainboard on the other Thinkpad? Or a temporary glitch?
I'll put that one together in a minute and we'll see.

By the way, if you're doing your first complete strip of a Thinkpad, I can highly recommend the videos at http://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/io ... index.html

Nope, back on the original machine and still no sound though the speakers.

Still, the strip-down wasn't a complete waste of time. I managed to put back the ultrabay ejection lever, which had fallen out of the machine a couple of months ago. I gave the inside a thorough clean as well.

So what am I left with? Mainboard trouble or is it after all a software issue?
The only recent change was an install of Dropbox - could that be the cause?

I assume you tried the mute button (next to the blue thinkvantage one) It is a toggle.

Yes, that's not it.

I swapped the hard drive over to the other T60 and yes, there was sound - so it's definitely a hardware issue.

Question is where? Are there any Thinkpad specific mobo diagnostic tools out there?

You already ran it, PC-Doctor. It doesn't catch everything though. It sounds like you're looking at replacing the systemboard unless you can troubleshoot the audio circuit.

Yeah, looks like it.

I was encouraged by that double transplant today. I might get a used T60p and look into creating a Frankenpad that supports SATA II speeds. I've seen some threads dealing with that.

Only the T61/R61/X61 can be BIOS modded to run HDs at SATA II speed.
The T60/p has a chip limitation to only SATA I and cannot be modded.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I was thinking of using a 4:3 14" T61 mainboard. It's been successfully done by several members here. Drawback is the GPU. Isn't the nvidia FX 570m 128 Mb a step back from an ATI Firegl 256 Mb?