Edge 431 - Black Screen / BIOS Issues

[watersong]

Client provided a Thinkpad Edge 431 Type 6277 ... said she was having issues instalingl AVG antivirus when the machine stopped booting entirely.

I don't think its a software issue.


I remove the battery and power, hold power down for a while, press it a dozen times. Reconnect, nothing. Turns on, fan spins, screen stays BLANK, no backlight

I then tried it with an external monitor, nothing.

took off the back cover, reseated the memory ... no change

removed the hard drive ... system came up!!

connected hard drive ... system came up so I did updates and looked for a BIOS update

after updates and reboot .... blank screen

image hard drive to another .... retry BIOS

BIOS update failed repeatedly, unable to read the BIOS

reset the BIOS and tried again, unable to read BIOS

used the CD method, unable to allocate Memory

Sometimes with the hard drive connected it will have a blank screen, sometimes Thinkpad logo will show up

It will sometimes boot back to windows after reseating the hard drive and memory, but it seems like something else is majorly wrong based on the inability to change the BIOS.


Any ideas or is this motherboard probably faulty?

[watersong]

Update .... it sat for a while. With no hard drive connected i tried to turn it on, blank screen

turned off


replaced memory - lenovo splash scren came up!!!!
installed the hard drive - blank
removed the hard drive - blank

reseated the memory - booted to splash screen
powered off and then back on - booted to splash screen
powered off again and then back on - blank screen

unable to install new BIOS even after restore to defaults


FUBAR?