Thinkpads Forum

I was just using my x61s and all of a sudden it froze, I had to press the power button to shut it down but now it won't turn on.

with battery fully charged and plugged in AC, when I press the power button the indicator lights light up and the laptop beeps for few seconds and nothing more, it just won't turn on.

What should i do?

aMadUrchin wrote:I was just using my x61s and all of a sudden it froze, I had to press the power button to shut it down but now it won't turn on.

with battery fully charged and plugged in AC, when I press the power button the indicator lights light up and the laptop beeps for few seconds and nothing more, it just won't turn on.

What should i do?

i would unplug the AC, take out the battery, then try to power on with just the battery.

if that doesn't work, i would try to power on with AC and no battery.

Look at the Hardware Maintenance Manual to understand what the Beep Codes mean.

Hardware Maintenance Manual - ThinkPad X60, X60s, X61, X61s

I tried it without the battery and it booted up, but soon it froze again and the same thing happens. And then it refuses to boot up no matter what.
It seems that if I unplug the laptop from AC and take out battery for a while it will work again, something must have reset during that time.

The beeps doesn't seem to match any of the ones listed in the manual, although I think it's my system board that's the source of the problem.

I guess I will have to send it in. Anyone have any experience with that? Like how long would it take usually? This is kinda of a bad time, I need it for school.

Thanks for the replies so far.

If you have on site service they would probably be there Tuesday. If you have depot service they would send a shipping box out that you should receive on Tuesday. You can place your ThinkPad in the box and call the number for pickup. If you can get the box ready for shipping quickly you can usually have them pickup the box the same day.

The depot should receive your ThinkPad Wednesday and if there are no delays for parts they can also ship it out the same day so you could have your repaired ThinkPad Thursday. This most likely will be the best case that you will not have your laptop for 4 days.

You can call for service anytime.

Please report back and let us know how you do.

Brad

aMadUrchin wrote:I tried it without the battery and it booted up, but soon it froze again and the same thing happens. And then it refuses to boot up no matter what.
It seems that if I unplug the laptop from AC and take out battery for a while it will work again, something must have reset during that time.

The beeps doesn't seem to match any of the ones listed in the manual, although I think it's my system board that's the source of the problem.

I guess I will have to send it in. Anyone have any experience with that? Like how long would it take usually? This is kinda of a bad time, I need it for school.

Thanks for the replies so far.

I am sympathetic, in school myself.

if you badly need the data off of it, I would remove the hard drive before sending it in and get one of those external drive kits for 2.5" inch hard drives. All you really need is the IDE to USB adapter in there, but the case is good to use too. then you can use this as you would a thumb drive on campus computers.

I would put in the request asap so they can get the box sent to you. good luck

apbudha makes an excellent point. Unless there is nothing on the hard drive that you need you can include the hard drive with the repair. Other than that there is no reason to include the hard drive if you are sending your ThinkPad to the depot.

Like apbudha says there are some options for you to continue to have access to your data without your ThinkPad.

Shipments have been known to be misplaced. You have two chances of that happening, on the way there and on the way back and then who knows what can happen once they receive your ThinkPad.

Please post back once your ThinkPad is fixed.

Brad

I had a very similiar problem with my x61s. The laptop never froze, but I had the same issue wit turning it back on, and having to remove the battery to get it to boot up. I sent it in and they got it workin pretty quickly

I called in last night and finally was able to boot up the laptop.

They said it could be due to overheating or faulty OS, since it's not that hot to the touch I ruled that out, but I put it on a laptop cooler I have nonetheless.

I managed to get the data off of the computer to an external hard drive with occasional interceptions due to freezing. Then I reinstalled the OS, and left it on overnight, everything seemed fine. Then once I started to use it again it blue screened on me, and pretty much went back to the condition it was in. The blue screen said something could be wrong with the hard drive so I ran a chkdsk and found nothing.

So now I can boot it up after doing all the tricks (unplug all power and let it sit), but it will just freeze or blue screen after a few minutes (seems to be random, I could be doing anything from installing programs or just web surfing).

So I concluded that it must be the motherboard (it has had some problems with restarting in the past, can't shut down) that's the culprit, so I called in and they will send me a box, possibly arriving Wednesday.

I will try to pull off the data during its working intervals (again) and send it in for them to fix. I have an 2.5 external enclosure but it's not SATA, so this is my only option.

My question right now is once they replaced the motherboard would I need to reinstall Windows (I will not be sending in my hard drive)? I have Vista Ultimate and it's a volume license from work.

Thanks for all the help, I will keep you guys updated. (Sorry this is so long)

aMadUrchin wrote:snip.....My question right now is once they replaced the motherboard would I need to reinstall Windows (I will not be sending in my hard drive)? I have Vista Ultimate and it's a volume license from work.....snip

Windows Vista might require reactivation.