x31 blank screen crash on batteries

Message

fudgy · #1 Post by **fudgy** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 5:26 pm

good evening

I just recently started having problems with my x31. It works perfectly while on AC power, but within 5 minutes of unplugging the screen goes blank and it's unusable. All of the status leds are on (power, battery, wifi) and the screen is on, but there is nothing on it. I tried shutting down the system while not being able to see anything (by memory) and that didn't work either.

I booted into the thinkvantage boot portion and that worked for 5 minutes on battery and the same problem occured.

Is it safe to say I have a defective battery? It's about 3 years old.

thanks for your help

oh and I am 7 days out of warranty as of this writing.

fudgy · #2 Post by **fudgy** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 5:28 pm

I forgot to add that if any of you have an x30/x31 in chicago and wouldn't mind letting me try your battery out, that would be great!

thanks again

hishamh · #3 Post by **hishamh** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:34 pm

fudgy wrote: Is it safe to say I have a defective battery? It's about 3 years old.

I wouldn't say the battery is defective, more like it's at the end of it's useful life. LiIon batteries tend to die out from two reasons - the cells deteriorate to the point where it won't hold a charge (about 2-3 years), or you've reached the charge-discharge lifecycle limit. Either way, you're looking at around the same timespan.

#4 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:52 pm

fudgy wrote:Is it safe to say I have a defective battery? It's about 3 years old.

Clicking Battery Information in the ThinkPad Configuration utility should confirm what the full charge capacity of your battery is (design capacity is about 47 Wh) and how many discharge cycles you have (I have about 650 after about 18 months of ownership on my X31).

fudgy · #5 Post by **fudgy** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:53 am

The battery information states the following:

Full Charge Capacity: 37.74 Wh
Cycle Count: 377
First Used Date: 2003-10

according to that, Tom has almost 300 more cycle counts so my battery is still ok correct?

As I was typing this on my desktop, the x31's screen just went blank while on AC power

. Now I am really confused. I wish this happened last week while I was still under warranty. Any suggestions?

many thanks

#6 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:58 pm

fudgy wrote:The battery information states the following:

Full Charge Capacity: 37.74 Wh
Cycle Count: 377
First Used Date: 2003-10

according to that, Tom has almost 300 more cycle counts so my battery is still ok correct?

As I was typing this on my desktop, the x31's screen just went blank while on AC power . Now I am really confused. I wish this happened last week while I was still under warranty. Any suggestions?

many thanks

377 cycles surely shouldn't have worn out the battery -- and 37.7 Wh is decent. I'm at 34.5 Wh and can still get three hours out of the battery.

In any case, it sounds like it's not the battery in any case. Call IBM and talk to them -- they may well be willing to do something still. (Canon repaired the shutter on my EOS 10D when it failed, a week out of warranty ...)

fudgy · #7 Post by **fudgy** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 12:01 am

I called IBM and they said since it is out of warranty I have to pay $595 for them to send a box out to fix it and if they find that it costs less they will refund a portion of my money.

I tried being nice and asking if they could send me a box since it just went out of warranty last week, but the guy wasn't having it.

In the meantime, my thinkpad has been working flawlessly with the battery removed and on AC power.

The reason I purchased a thinkpad was because of reliability, and now I feel I have lost some of that because even now I'm worried about the screen going blank. I really can't afford 600 bucks, and now I probably won't be writing any papers for school on this one because of fear of a crash.

a sad day indeed.

#8 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 2:52 am

fudgy wrote:In the meantime, my thinkpad has been working flawlessly with the battery removed and on AC power.

The reason I purchased a thinkpad was because of reliability, and now I feel I have lost some of that because even now I'm worried about the screen going blank. I really can't afford 600 bucks, and now I probably won't be writing any papers for school on this one because of fear of a crash.

a sad day indeed.

If it's working OK without a battery installed, I would keep using it like that for a few days to a week to make sure. If that's still OK, pick up a new battery from eBay and see if that works. It could be that the electronics inside the battery are causing the problem.

Incidentally, when the screen goes blank, are there any events written to the Windows event viewer log?

fudgy · #9 Post by **fudgy** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:03 am

10 minutes after I wrote the last post, the screen went blank again while the battery was removed. So definitely not the battery, although the screen goes blank much quickly (during boot or within 5 minutes of loading windows while on battery power). Also, with the battery connected sometimes powering on results in the fan running constantly and no screen/hard drive activity.

I will check the event viewer log next time it happens.

thanks for all your help.

#10 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 11:00 am

fudgy wrote:10 minutes after I wrote the last post, the screen went blank again while the battery was removed. So definitely not the battery, although the screen goes blank much quickly (during boot or within 5 minutes of loading windows while on battery power). Also, with the battery connected sometimes powering on results in the fan running constantly and no screen/hard drive activity.

I will check the event viewer log next time it happens.

The event viewer should still have all the events from your past blank-outs.

Have you tried running with an external monitor to see whether it's a display issue (as opposed to the mainboard)?

fudgy · #11 Post by **fudgy** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 12:20 pm

ok. The event viewer shows no information of anything during the time of the blank-outs.

I hooked the TP up to an external monitor, and at the blank out time my monitor displayed this screen:

Also, when I was pushing the power button on the thinkpad to shut it off, the screen flickered and became purple. I tried pushing in other places near the power button with the same result, but after 5 pushes that stopped happening.

thanks again.

#12 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 8:17 pm

fudgy wrote:I hooked the TP up to an external monitor, and at the blank out time my monitor displayed this screen (...)

Uh-oh. That's not good. Your video output has gone bad, which would indicate a bad motherboard.

One last thought: are you by any chance running CHC or NHC with custom CPU voltages? If you are, can you try running without CHC/NHC to see if it makes any difference?

fudgy · #13 Post by **fudgy** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 8:25 pm

bad motherboard!!

I'm not running CHC or NHC, just Battery Maximiser.

Where do I go from here?

#14 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 6:34 am

fudgy wrote:bad motherboard!!

I'm not running CHC or NHC, just Battery Maximiser.

Where do I go from here?

I think your only options are calling IBM or looking for a replacement motherboard on eBay. Unless you can find a local shop that's reasonably experienced in ThinkPad repair that might be able to help you out.

Sorry ...

fudgy · #15 Post by **fudgy** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 12:47 pm

Tom, Thanks for all your help

I will try calling IBM again and see if they will help out a poor college student. There are some laptop repair shops around here; I will try them as well. System boards on ebay are ranging from $450-$900, and in that range I could just get a used x31 with a warranty.

It's strange that if this is a system board problem how I am able to use it for awhile with A/C plugged in & battery removed before it conks out.

Do any of you guys/gals know a good shop in the Chicago area? There are a lot so I really don't know where to start.

thanks!

fudgy · #16 Post by **fudgy** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 1:37 pm

ok I uninstalled battery maximiser and installed NHC, dropped some voltages (following the skanky thread below as my TP was also running at 60C at 600mhz) and now its been working with the battery plugged in (not ready to go off a/c power yet) for almost 45 minutes.

CPU temp is a cool 44C. I thought maybe my video card was overheating. Do any of you recommend underclocking the video card using ATI clock control? I think I need to have a look inside to see if there is hair/lint clogging up my cooling system as I think the previous owner of this system had a cat.

#17 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 2:15 pm

fudgy wrote:ok I uninstalled battery maximiser and installed NHC, dropped some voltages (following the skanky thread below as my TP was also running at 60C at 600mhz) and now its been working with the battery plugged in (not ready to go off a/c power yet) for almost 45 minutes.

CPU temp is a cool 44C. I thought maybe my video card was overheating. Do any of you recommend underclocking the video card using ATI clock control? I think I need to have a look inside to see if there is hair/lint clogging up my cooling system as I think the previous owner of this system had a cat.

Promising!

I just use the "ATI auto clock" in NHC/CHC. Currently running at 46C in dynamic mode, it'll be lower at home when I switch to max battery mode.

fudgy · #18 Post by **fudgy** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:08 pm

No luck.

was working for awhile, then same problem with the blank screen. I tried changing the video card drivers and opened it up to see if anything was blocking airflow as well. She's as clean as a whistle.

I just don't get why it works for awhile, then the error occurs. Also, why the error is more frequent with the battery installed than without. Lastly, what could have caused this?

fudgy · #19 Post by **fudgy** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:10 pm

I'd like to apologize for sounding like an english paper

fudgy · #20 Post by **fudgy** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:30 pm

I can't call IBM tech support through my cell phone. I try to get through then it says call not answered on one phone and the other phone disconnects. This is with Cingular/GSM. The number I try is 800-426-7378. The way I called last time was through Skype on the laptop, but it's not stable enough to place a phone call now. Does anyone else have this problem or do I have the worst luck on Earth.

fudgy · #21 Post by **fudgy** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:22 pm

I just wanted to update everyone in case others are having problems. I took my x31 to a local repair shop that charged 45 bucks to just take a look if I decided against a repair. They called me after a couple days and said that there was an excess amount of dust and lint inside which was causing a short and the laptop was working perfectly after they cleaned it out.

Now, $79 later I am typing this message on it and it's just like it was when I got it. I'm really happy I didn't have to go out and buy a new system board. I think the previous owner had a cat, so clean out your thinkpads! (esp if you have a cat)

fudgy · #22 Post by **fudgy** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:35 pm

ok so the clean out actually had no effect. I found an x31 system board on ebay for about 150 and just installed it. everything is REALLY working now. it also came with some extra ram so a great deal.