x31 won't bootup

[lostdude]

Hi guys, my x31 won't boot anymore. I press the power button and all 3 lights come on then nothing happens and the power light stays on and the fan is spinning and nothing else happens.

I used it last night and it shut down normally, i bought this x31 second hand about 6 months ago but it was literally brand new hardly has being used.

The only thing i did different was attach my external usb harddrive before i powered on the laptop.

I've tried removing and swapping out the harddrive and ram and its the same, is it a dead mobo?

thanks.

[Harryc]

Do you hear a beep after power on? See any hard drive activity via the activity light? You could try removing power, remove the battery, hold down the power button for 10 repetitions, then hold it down steady for 30 seconds. Connect AC only (no battery) and try to power up.

[lostdude]

hi thanks for your reply,
i tried ur suggest but unfortunaty it didn't work,
i get no beeps on start up and theres no harddrive activity at all.

thanks.

[mazzinia]

Just a weird idea... is the usb port damaged/shorted ?

[lostdude]

Just a weird idea... is the usb port damaged/shorted ?

i had a look there doesn't seem to be any physical damage or anything burnt.

is there a way i can check whether the usb has shorted?

thanks

[charles.atcher]

My vote is dead motherboard. Just coincidence with the external HD. I have two do that to me now.

[nicknane]

see here
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 71#p487571

[twiceferrel]

This also happened to me with my T23. I had noticed that pressing on the bottom of the laptop where the miniPCI slot is, made it boot properly, and also that when I took the wireless card I had in the miniPCI slot out, it booted every time without fail.

Also, my wireless had started being less reliable. So I assumed it was something with that, kept the miniPCI card out, and just got a PCMCIA wireless card.

ALSO, this happened with my sister's T23 (weird, huh?), and to make it boot, she had to use only one stick of ram at a time.

Maybe we just both had bad motherboards, and they showed their symptoms in different ways? I don't really know, but it seemed both times that doing what we did completely fixed the problem (my sister still uses her thinkpad, and that problem was about 2 years ago).

[TheRedFox]

for a while I was having a mobo issue where the laptop would randomly turn off, and not be able to turn back on till I took it apart and put it back together partially. finally, after that stopped working, I took apart the entire laptop (including removing the mob from the bottom-casing), and it hasn't suffered that issue since. it's a slightly different issue, but more than once has taking a computer apart and putting it back together fixed it, so I recommend that.