Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone, i picked up a new X61 yesterday from microcenter and about an hour after getting it out of the box i closed the lid and set it down, upon returning the screen had changed to a series of colors and lines with what was running behind barely visible but stagnant with the system totally unresponsive requiring a hard shutdown. Thinking that vista was the culprit and the fact that i hate vista i did a clean install of XP Pro and all seemed fine for about a day until it happened again. This time i didn't close the lid but i did move it and set it down gently. Also, both times i had windows set to "do nothing" when closing the lid so that shouldn't have any bearing on this. Is the active hard drive protection causing the crash? That is the only thing that makes sense to me. I have turned the sensitivity down on the active hd protection and i will see if this happens again. Thanks for any help in advance!

Sounds like an standby problem with the GPU driver etc. or the display cable has/gets some loose connection etc. when the display lid is closed.

Most notebooks under Vista -namely their display drivers- have problems when returning from a standby mode, to setup again the correct display resolutions etc. This is especially often the fact with first beta or older version GPU-drivers under Vista.

However, on the other side it's also possible that the X61 you got makes some sort of loose or bending connection on the display flat cable when the display lid is closed.

You should try to find out what exactly makes this behaviour, e.g. if it is a Vista software problem or instead a hardware loose connection problem. - If it is the later you should let it fix by the Lenovo support, or exchange the Thinkpad from the dealer/reseller.

Thanks for the reply vkyr. It just happened again and i took a picture. It was sitting in my lap, i closed the screen and re-opened it and this is what it looks like: http://fadedlinux.com/broken.jpg
System is completely unresponsive and requires a hard shutdown every time this happens.

This is under a fresh install of XP Pro with all the latest drivers. I think i'm going to take it along with that picture back to microcenter and see if they will take it back.

Looks like a video memory corruption to me. I see about the same thing on a couple of A31 systems although flexing the chassis is what causes my problems, not standby mode.

I would definitely return the unit.

that sure is a screwed up display..

i'm leaning (hard) to a hardware problem..

i agree with the others that it might be something loose..
such things have happened, before..

if micro-center is local, they might exchange it for you..
if not, as disappointing as this is, i would take it to a local service center and see if you can get it looked at right away..
either that or upgrade to an onsite warranty and then call it in..

welcome to the planetwide thinkpad community..

It just did the same thing on boot at the POST screen. I'm going to run memtest because i added a stick of ram to it and the timings may be incorrect, then i'll remove that stick and test it some more. If the problem persists its going back today.

*edit* it appears that whenever you tap the laptop on the thinkpad logo the screen freaks out. I just tested this while memtest was running off a bootable cd and it works every time. I'm going to microcenter right not. Thanks for the help.

diablo266 wrote:Thanks for the reply vkyr. It just happened again and i took a picture. It was sitting in my lap, i closed the screen and re-opened it and this is what it looks like: http://fadedlinux.com/broken.jpg
System is completely unresponsive and requires a hard shutdown every time this happens.

This is under a fresh install of XP Pro with all the latest drivers. I think i'm going to take it along with that picture back to microcenter and see if they will take it back.

Ahhh I see now the picture, this isn't a software driver problem, if it always looks like this, it's more a cable contact problem from pressure, maybe the cable does some bad contact when it is bend or even instead the inverter gets distorted.

Yes, you should give it back or let the reseller exchange it with another new X61.

I was able to reproduce the problem at microcenter and they exchanged it without any hassle. Hopefully this one will be free of troubles like my trusty old X31

diablo266 wrote:I was able to reproduce the problem at microcenter and they exchanged it without any hassle. Hopefully this one will be free of troubles like my trusty old X31

Congrats!

To be certain if this unit is free of trouble run a full PC Doctor's device test atleast twice.

Ouch... I experienced the same problem with a T30 I had. The screen would distort in a manner very similar to your laptop and indeed it was a hardware problem: they traced it to a faulty video connector.

Glad you were able to get a new unit without any hassles.