Help!! My ThinkPad R40 will not start up!!

[A31]

Hi all,
I am new to this site, I have two ThinkPads (an A31 & an R40, also have a ThinkCentre 8177!! So I'm a BIG IBm fan!!), the A31 (thanks to my "upgrades"!!) is an AMAZING laptop now, but the R40 is in a different state...

...was working on it yesterday with the charger plugged in, the charger wire got caught under the other ThinkPad (the A31), the pulled the wire and this resulted in the connecter on the end of the charger, coming lose out of the socket in the laptop. It didn't fall all the way out. I had this problem on the other ThinkPad, and on that I simply plugged it back in and it worked absoloutely fine, but on my R40 this was different. Plugged the charger back in and nothing, not even the battery charging icon. It won't power up at all... I think I may have short-circuited the laptop which can result in serious damage to the battery. Would buying a new battery solve this problem?? (both the laptops were write offs but I got the A31 running, and I eventually got the R40 going and then it died again.)

Solutions I have tried:
.Use the charger that the A31 has...
.Try starting WITHOUT the battery...
.Holding down the POWER ON button and then plugging the charger in...

and nothing has worked!
Obviously as it will not turn on, I am unable to install XP or any OS (came shipped with XP).

I don't know if these will help but these are my specs...
.Windows XP Professional SP3
.INTEL Pentium 4
.20GB HDD
.256 MB RAM
...and I know little else.

I would be really grateful if somebody could come back with a solution to my problem as this is a REALLY NICE laptop and it's such a shame it has decided to pack up on me just when I got it going!

Cheers!
A31

[RealBlackStuff]

Take everything out (wifi card, modem, drives, RAM) and connect to a working AC adapter (16V, 4.5A, 72W).
It should beep 1-3-3-1 for having no RAM.
If you don't hear anything, your motherboard is toast

[A31]

If I do hear the beeps, does this mean that my R40 will work again?? If I hear them should I then remove the charger and connect everything back?? Thanks for the help, will try this today!

[RealBlackStuff]

If it beeps, all is not lost.
Put 1 RAM back in and try to boot into BIOS. Then put it in the other slot and boot again.
If it still beeps 1-3-3-1, that RAM module may be shot.
Repeat with the other module, as above.
If you can boot with either or both, add 1 item at a time and reboot, until you find the culprit.

[A31]

Cheers "realblackstuff!"

Probably won't be until the weekend that I'll be able to have a look at it, but thank you for the help!!
If it doesn't work it will be a shame, but roll on the weekend!!

I'll post a reply if it works or not!!! (just hope it does!)

also - I think it only has RAM chip, only 1 256MB chip, do I just insert that and not worry about the other chip(s) that you said...assume I do?? I'll check in a bit!

[RealBlackStuff]

There is room for 2 chips, up to 2x 512MB AFAIK.
If you have only the one chip, and it still beeps 1-3-3-1, buy/borrow another 200-pin SODIMM PC2100 or PC2700.
If it boots in either slot, try installing the rest piece by piece and boot each time.

[A31]

ok then, will borrow some RAM out of my A31 for this...thanks agin for your support.

[A31]

Just quickly removed the RAM in the r40, nothing doing...
...when i get more time at the weekend i will try and remove everything, drives, wifi (dont think it even has one!) etc...

[A31]

It's dead - R.I.P, R40!

[RealBlackStuff]

Join the queue.
Reading through the posts in this forum, it seems to be a bad year for R40s.
Undoubtedly this has something to do with them being built by Acer, not IBM.

[A31]

I'd rather the R40 die than the A31!! The R40 did have problems with USB and had some pretty serious screen brightness issues before it died.
I don't have it anymore, removed the 40GB HDD as that was really the only bit worth keeping! It's in the bin now!
It was nice whilist it lasted but hey, I have the more perfomance orientated A31 now! (which I'm steadily improving!)

[RealBlackStuff]

Get it out of the bin again.
Part it out (CPU, fan, case parts, keyboard, etc.)
Keep all the screws, you may need them one day...