Unplugging USB - brought down G41

[soft.tester]

This is what happened to my G41. It has been working great for 3 years!

I was working on the laptop and had to unplug my USB printer. When I pulled the USB plug the screen went blue with “memory dump” message. I turned it off, then turned it on. It asked me to boot up in “Safe Mode” I did. It booted up Windows and looked like I could access files. I decided to restart it in normal mode again so I turned it off and booted up. It displayed message – “error: configure date/time” and would let me into BIOS where I did updated date/time. I would reboot again and all I see is the first screen when you turn your thinkpad on – “IBM thinkpad, blablabla” it would not go farther. I tried “blue button”, I tried to access BIOS set up, changing boot devices – nothing. It would sit on that screen, period. I also noticed that the “hard drive” icon would stay lit all the time.

What would be my next step?

[sjthinkpader]

Normally you want to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Task Tray to shutdown peripheral before plugging anything.

At this point, some system files may be damaged. Tried a Safe Mode boot. If that doesn't work you may need to do a Recovery. If you have another computer, remove the HDD and use a USB housing to copy your data first.

[jdhurst]

The advice to "Safely remove hardware" first is good advice and advice that I follow myself.

However, some USB devices (like a printer) don't have much impact. You could, for example unplug the cable from the printer first (then the USB cable is vacant), or you could turn off the printer (same effect). So I don't see how this action could have damaged your ThinkPad unless something else was occuring at the same time.

So, I can see you have a major problem. I am just wondering out loud if it was really the printer that caused it. Strange, from my point of view. ... JDH

[sjthinkpader]

Not sure about the G series but normally USB ports have a resettable fuse on each port to mitigate any shorting. It seems there was a power fluctuation when the HDD is writing sometime. Then the file or FAT table got messed up.

[soft.tester]

I used encolure to pull some files out and ran chkdsk on a drive. If found a lot of "indexes" problem but was able to restore it. So I put the dirve back in thinkpad and turn it on. It sat for a minute, then loaded windows then prompted the there was system error and shuted down. Now when I turn it on, even "IBM THINKPAD" boot message is not showing up.
Do you think my HD is bad??? Or Mother board?

Thank you for your help

[jdhurst]

The way to check the latter is with a boot CD (Bart's PE or Knoppix boot CD). If the machine will boot and run with a boot CD, then it is not likely the motherboard. Bart's PE will have chkdsk on it and you can check the HD that way. Knoppix is easier to do (find it, download it and burn to a CD). You can use its file management ... JDH

[soft.tester]

At the end it was falty RAM chip..... Replaced the chip and everything started to work normal ..... Crazy.....