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X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2015 2:15 pm
by englishbob
Hello,
Last night I shut down my X61 and today when turning it on it won't boot. With the power connected the green power light and battery light are lit. With no power connected the battery light is orange for a second then turns off. No other lights flicker and I hear no noise from the fan. There are also no BIOS beeps to be heard.

Things I have tried having googled 'thinkpad power on':

- I have checked that the keyboard connector is seated properly;
- I have removed the battery, hard disk (SSD Crucial BX100) and RAM an left it unplugged for 30minutes;
- I have removed and reconnected the yellow CMOS battery;
- I have held down the power button with battery HD and RAM removed for 90 seconds;
- I have tried powering on with just the AC adapter connected.

Has anyone any tips? It was running fine yesterday with no excessive heat being blown out by the fan.

Rob

Re: X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 11:47 am
by wileE
If you try to start without battery, SSD and RAM, do you get Bios beeps because of the missing RAM?

Re: X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:52 pm
by englishbob
Hello,
Thanks for taking the time to help.

I've tried what you suggested and I hear no POST beeping at all. I've also tried this with headphones attached and have opened the case and verified that the speaker in attached to the motherboard.
I've also tried attaching a monitor to the VGA output but see nothing.

I did all this with the battery removed as asked.


Rob

Re: X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2015 2:04 pm
by RealBlackStuff
Try another power supply (65W or 90W), maybe try another wall outlet?
If still no go, start :cry:

Met een 1-2-3-in God's-naam ging het ketelbinkie X61 overboord...

Re: X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:50 am
by englishbob
I'm not giving in that easy!
I intend to source a motherboard from ebay and rebuild it, to be better, stronger!

Re: X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:57 am
by englishbob
It lives! I left the laptop unplugged without its battery in for 4 days. I had removed the SSD and tested it in another machine to check it was working. I then put it back in the X61 and out of curiosity pressed the on button only to be met by a beep followed by a successful POST!

I wonder if having it plugged into a 90W adapter upset it in the first place...

Bizarre!

Re: X61 not booting/powering up

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 11:01 am
by MikalE
Glad it's up and running again. Some fixes defy explanation.

My T520 would wake up and go back to sleep a couple of times while in sleep mode. I shut off everything that could possibly wake this thing up while sleeping to no avail.

Tried everything I read on-line and nothing worked.

I finally tired of having it wake up on me so I started using hibernate instead. After three days of using hibernate I tried Sleep mode again on the outside chance it might work.

It hasn't woke up after being put in sleep mode since. Strange.