R40 LAN/USB/S-Video Problem

[adamoz]

I have an R40-2681 which has an odd problem. The USB port on the rear of the computer only works intermittently, the lights on the ethernet port will only come on for a second or so when u have exactly the right amount of pressure on the cable, and the s-video out and modem don't work at all.

There is no problem with any of these internally, all are recognised by windows xp, all have drivers and the internal tests for modem and ethernet run fine.

I found a page on lenovo's support site that suggested reseating the network card, but could not find any mention of how to do this in the hardware manual.

Any suggestions would be appreciated,
thanks
Adam

R40-2681
Pentium 4-M 1.9Ghz
512MB RAM
30GB HDD

[Cardazio]

I have the Thinkpad R40 2681-HTG and suffer from the same problem. It says 100 MBit for like 1 or 2 secs and then "no cable attached". Not sure wether or not it actually connects for those 2 secs.. Would really appreciate some input.

[Terrahawk]

Have a quick peek into the port - the pins inside may be starting to get pushed up towards the bottom of the port. You may be able to bend them back outwards with a small scalpel or a pin.

When the pins are bent too far down, they will not contact with the ethernet plug properly and result in intermittent connection. If you find that pulling the cable upwards restores the connection, that is probably the case.

I have a R40 2723, and the pins in my ethernet port are on the bottom.

[adamoz]

thanks terrahawk, bending the pins up fixed the ethernet problem straight away.

also a quick update, my s-video port is working fine, i had been using an s-video to composite adapter from my nvidia card on my desktop and recently found information that these won't work on ati cards. So I went and got a cheap s-video to composite adapter from my local electronics store and it worked first go. It took me nearly 6 months to work that one out, d'oh!

R40-2681
Pentium 4-M 1.9Ghz
512MB RAM
40GB HDD
Atheros 5212A miniPCI wireless b/g with no-1802 bios patch