Thinkpads Forum

Hey Everyone~
I've been given a stroke of bad luck with my T400 that I've had for about 3 years. I think it may have overheated, and now the display won't turn on. The rest of it seems to be working as the green lights come on, and I can hear it whirring when I turn on the power button (if that helps at all). Anyway, I've tried pressing the power button 15x and holding it for 30 seconds and I'm not sure what the problem could be? I'm more interested in trying to get the pictures that I neglected to back up. I've tried to a VGA cable on my HDMI tv, but to no avail. Any suggestions?

If neither the internal or external displays work, then it sounds like the graphics card is dead. Just to be sure, try reseating the CMOS battery inside the laptop. Make sure you don't have any BIOS passwords enabled, though. The hard drive is likely OK, and you can buy a HDD to USB cable and plug it into a working machine to access all the files. You could try putting the drive into another machine, but Windows tends to get corrupted if the hardware is too different.

If the graphics card is dead, then a motherboard replacement would be necessary. Whether or not it makes sense depends on how much you like the laptop, but I would personally pass and get something like a T420. Much faster, and the last model in the series to feature a classic layout keyboard.

hey thank you! hmmm.. would that be easiest? I was thinking about just taking out the hard drive but yeah I'd be too worried about corrupting everything. Are those cables sold out places like best buy or would I have to look online?

pull the hard drive and use a USB/SATA device and access the drive via a USB port on most ANY thinkpad or other computer and grab your content..

i'm sure newmodeUS (in banner above) has some of these, cheap..

Get something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Put your hard drive in it.
Plug it into another PC.

Get your data back.

I hope I may hijack this thread with my similar problem. Since a few days, my T400 sometimes went hanging and after restart I was unable to get the screen on. After giving it some resting time, it was working again. But these issues got more frequent, sometimes with a BSOD. Currently, I'm practically unable to get it running.

Now in the office I tried hooking it up with an external screen and so far (fingers crossed) seems to work fine. When going into Windows projector settings (Win+P), strangely it's "computer only" option that is marked (normally an option for the thinkpad display running). Other options have zero effect.

So I'm hoping my ThinkPad is yet alive and well but seems there's trouble with the display. In the ever fewer cases when I get the display running for a while, it works perfectly... until it stops. All the notification icons are working normally all the time.

Could it be that there's just some wrong connection? Or is a display change needed? Is it even possible?

Thank you very much in advance!

Check the LCD-cable at both ends, that it is properly inserted/connected.
Also check either your CCFL-inverter or LED-module.