T400 Screen Blacks out

[kduniverse]

Hello,

I don't think it's an issue with the screen, but something hardware related...I think this because my last T43 had similar issues and turned out the mobo went bad.

Anyway, the screen goes black/grey and the first time this happend it was blue and had an odd pattern. This started within the last 2-3 weeks and has happened twice. I recently have had the alerts saying the battery isn't capable of holding a full charge, can they be related? The only thing I am able to do is hold the power button down to do a shut down. Once I restart, I started the Event Viewer to see if there was anythhing there. I see an Event ID 41, Kernal Power Source. It just says that the laptop shut down unexpectedly. Nothing else, I don't think.

What I'm asking is how can I check to see exactly what is going on? Can I tell if it's hardware related or what? I'd like to know if something is failing because this is a heavily used work laptop. So far it's been great. I am running Win7 x64. Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,

[mnowell69]

the only reason you are getting the event id 41, is that you are shutting down the laptop with the power button depressed. Usual thing to try when screens are involved is to connect an external display device and see what happens. If this works fine then the graphics card is ok and likely to be an lcd fault (inverter etc)

[kduniverse]

Thanks for the reply. Is there anything I can do as far as a diagnostic test to check everything? Connecting an external display is ok, but like I said it's not a common thing as it's only happened twice in the last few weeks. Also, does it matter if the screen is LED LCD?

[mnowell69]

Not aware of any tests that you can do to check the lcd hardware, inverter etc. Does the screen go funny when using the radeon chip?, the intel chip? or both of them? The only thing i would suggest is to run some graphic card benchmarking software using the external display. First with the radeon chip and then again with the Intel chip and see what happens. I have had no problems at all with my T400 so can't really help you further than what i have suggested.
Obviously if the external display never fails then you have an issue with your screen or inverter (incl. wiring)

[kduniverse]

What about general diagnostics to test all hardware to make sure it isn't aything else?

[mnowell69]

there are general diagnostics that are pre-installed on most thinkpads, the Lenovo Thinkvantage Toolbox ( an updated version of PC doctor). These really won't help in this case. There may be serious diagnostics you can download but have never bothered myself. IBM used to have a diagnostics card to plug into the computer, not sure if Lenovo still use that system or not.

[kduniverse]

Just happened again. Although the pic shows blue, it's actually a grey screen. In the middle of working, nothing unusual or anything like that. Just goes grey...Any ideas as to what this could be, or where to even begin checking? Connecting another monitor is something that would be possible to do, but it happens so infrequently that traveling as much as I do with this, would be a problem. Also, I let it sit for a minute and did not see the hdd light flicker at all.