video lockup issues with a r40

[reynard082]

Hello. I started experiencing issues with my thinkpad on friday and it's only got worse. On Friday Morning with out any kind of notice, the machine just froze and if you tried to move the trackpoint, the screen would shake. I turned the machine off, thinking nothing of it. However, the next time I turned it on...the computer started, however there was no video. I tried restarting again, and the machine froze at the windows bootup screen after the bios.

I went home and it seemed to be working fine again for a few minutes until it decided to freeze again. Afterwards I tried restarting it and I got 1 long beep and 2 short beeps. I started taking the machine apart, to see if anything looked out of the ordinary, which nothing does.

I have my machine completely updated with IBM Updates and Windows Updates. The process went w/o a hitch, so I decided to bolt everything back in. It's weird, if I choose to have the keyboard screwed in, the machine freezes up. However, if I have the keyboard loosened and resting and clamped in, it seems to work.

I'm completely stumped. Here's the specs on my machine.

IBM Thinkpad R40 (about 2 1/2 years old)
Model: 2681-GMU
Pentium 4 Mobile 2.0Ghz
Radeon 7500 32MB Video Chip
768 MB of RAM and a Cisco 802.11B Mini-PCI

I've also had my machine on for about 2 days straight before this started, but i've done this before, so i'm not sure if this is a problem.

Any kind of ideas would be helpful. Thanks.

[bhtooefr]

It's weird, if I choose to have the keyboard screwed in, the machine freezes up. However, if I have the keyboard loosened and resting and clamped in, it seems to work.

Right there, that tells me that something's shorting out. You may want to try a thin layer of plastic between the keyboard and the rest...

[reynard082]

thanks for the advice, i'll try that when I get home.

here's a little update. right now i have the keyboard unscrewed and not "clamped" in and it seems to be working. I also have the backup battery unplugged, it seemed to fix it last night, so i keep it unplugged for now... I used it for several hours last night and it seemed to be working fine. I turned it off and went to sleep. I woke up this morning and it turned on, however the screen showed no output. I had to manually turn it off and on a few times for it to show output. Right now it's working...