X220 / Constant Blinking Display (on/off) / System unusable

[anandn]

Folks,

Need your inputs. It's the 3rd Thinkpad in the family, the X220, just
over 4 months old, in extremely good hands.

Today morning we turned it on and the display is constantly blinking,
to a point of making the system unusable. I have posted a video on
youtube, but it is under processing. Basically the laptop display
keeps turning on/off, I hear beeps while this happens and there is
intermittent behaviour from locking the laptop to logout, in a infinite
loop, wireless stopping / starting, drives mounting / unmoiunting,
basically I have turn it off to stop this nightmare.

It runs both Linux and Windows 7, exactly the same behavior in both
the OS. I tried booting it with a live stick (linux), still the same
issue.

I tried pluging it to an external display, no luck, still the same
display turning on/off and blinking.

Any idea what is happening?

Anything I can try to trouble shoot this?

I have some critical data stored on the harddrive and am worried I
will lose it should I send it for repair. Any way I can backup the
data (Over 26Gig).

Appreciate any help / pointers on this.

Thanks
Anand

X220 Config:
Intel Core i5-2520M Processor (2.50GHz, 3MB L3, 1333MHz FSB)
12.5" Premium HD (1366x768) LED Backlit Display, 2x2 Antenna
Intel i5-2520M, 4 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM)
Camera 720p HD Camera, 320GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 AGN

[ThinkRob]

Remove the drive before you send it in, but send it in you should.

[Atreides]

Like Rob said, I'd definitely send it in. You're still under warranty, and whatever the issue is with it seems so major that I wouldn't even know where to begin troubleshooting and wouldn't recommend you try.

You can hold on the HDD, and I'd back it up to another machine as well just to be safe.