X61s Will Not Power Up

[Pete B]

I bought an X61s in nice condition several years ago, loaded windows 7, Middleton
BIOS, more RAM, redid thermal paste, found a good condition battery with low cycles.
Ended up putting it in dock in the kitchen where it has been for the last 3 years or so.
I let it auto update to Win 10, and booting became very slow because it would often
do updates on booting. We stopped using it for about 6 months.
Tried to boot it and it would go into the Win 10 desktop but it was unresponsive to clicking
on icons. Power cycled it and it just got worse.
Have it out of the dock on another power adapter and power and battery green lights are
on when power is applied, usually it does nothing when I press the power button. I've tried
each memory stick alone and here is the weird thing, if I change the memory we get lots
of green lights and I see the Thinkpad option on the display but then it goes dead again
and is unresponsive to the power button. It does this with or without the batter installed.
I've tried holding the power button down with the batter and power adapter out and it
doesn't seem to make a difference.

Suggestions?

[axur-delmeria]

Full disassembly, inspect for signs of corrosion or other damage.

We've had old laptops that died after not being used for at least 3 months.

[Shredder11]

A year or two ago I powered on my mum's X61s and thick plumes of smoke came out of the fan grill. I also think I remember a flash of light going from one end of the screen to the other, around the bottom of the frame (inverter?). It did not boot up and appeared completely dead. I took it all apart to inspect and could find nothing wrong and no damage or burn marks. I put it all back together again, tried to boot and this time no smoke and it booted up fine, and has been fine ever since. This machine goes months between each use these days.

[Pete B]

I have it torn down now and am reseating the connectors, looking for issues.
Nothing obvious so far.
I've not been able to find the FRU for the motherboard in the HMM or is there a
site to look up the correct one with the L7700?

That's amusing about smoke then working fine!

[Pete B]

No luck, there is a black look around a corner of the display connector on the motherboard
and the display is VERY dim. I'm going to sell this as is. I also have an X60s that I'll sell
with it.