Thinkpads Forum

My T500 (4 years old) suddenly refused to start up today.

When I press the power button I see the usual set of indicator lights flash on for a second as normal, then all go out except for the power indicator, battery indicator, and plugged-in-to-AC indicator. I hear the fan running, but that's it. I don't even get the Thinkpad BIOS splash screen.

I have tried unplugging it, removing the battery, and then pressing the power key multiple times and holding it down for many seconds and then putting everything back and trying to turn it on again. No luck .

Motherboard dead? Power supply dead? Any hope of spontaneous recovery?

Also, assuming it's the motherboard, what does it cost to fix that these days? (Yeah, I know it's time to get a new machine, but if it can be fixed for under $200, it's very tempting for me right now).

Sounds like an issue with either the graphics chip or the display. Maybe the cable.

Try on an external display and see if it works. If it does, either your internal thinkpad display or the cable is gone.

Also, check if all your USB ports are fine. If one is broken and the pins touch each other, it shorts the system, preventing it from starting.

rlcarr wrote:if it can be fixed for under $200, it's very tempting for me right now.

Very tempting indeed. Unless you need top performance, a new machine probably won't offer you much. Try pulling the memory, battery, WiFi card optical drive, hard drive and do the power button thing again. Power it with the AC to see if the motherboard beeps.

Does your Thinkpad comes with ATI GPU?

Yes. It has the switchable graphics capability, with ATI as the discrete graphics adapter.

Take off the keyboard but dont disconnect the kb cable. Press on the ATI GPU really hard (put pressure on it the heat sink directly above ati gpu) and then press the power on button. If it starts go into your bios and switch to integrated gpu mode under display option.