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Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

T430-T490, T530-T590 Series
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Half-Saint
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Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#1 Post by Half-Saint » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:25 am

I'm sorry for not starting a separate topic but it will be easier for me to follow this by cramming both machines in one thread.

Anyway, I'm having problems with two Thinkpads which are now sitting around not being used. I was planning to sell the T530 but obviously can only sell it for parts now.

T530 does turn on but shuts off after a few seconds. I tried swapping the battery, CMOS battery, keyboard and RAM. Tried running it on battery power alone, without the battery and also without the hard drive. Same thing. Sometimes it stays on for longer and at one point I was almost able to install windows.

T420 used to work fine until my wife started complaining that she couldn't turn it on. The trick with removing the battery and holding the power button for 30 seconds worked for a few times. After a while I wasn't able to power it on at all. It's now dead as a brick.

I'd appreciate any ideas you guys may have. Thanks.

Half-Saint
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Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#2 Post by Half-Saint » Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:16 pm

Well, if I can't fix them, I'll have to sell them for parts or something.

Cheers

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#3 Post by RealBlackStuff » Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:39 am

Unless you can find some cheap replacement motherboards, that may be your better bet.
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
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kfzhu1229
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Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#4 Post by kfzhu1229 » Thu Jul 29, 2021 9:18 am

Half-Saint wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:16 pm
Well, if I can't fix them, I'll have to sell them for parts or something.
If they don't beep any sort of error codes, which unfortunately for ThinkPads, won't do so most of the time, it's hard to track down what's faulty!
I have had instances where a T520 powers on but no screen, and it turned out to be a dead CPU (Which I then had to plug in to a Dell Latitude and wait for it to flash me a CPU failure error code to confirm!). Your situation may not be so lucky unfortunately...
But from my experience, the T530 can also have a dead CPU and the T420 is possible to have a corrupted BIOS.
Try the CPU inside the T420 in the T530 and see if it works. T530 works with all supported CPU's of T420 out of the box.
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

Elmer Fishtwanger
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Location: Somerset, KY U.S.A.

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#5 Post by Elmer Fishtwanger » Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:54 pm

The 420 could possibly be the power switch. Being harder to turn on until it wouldn't turn on at all. Maybe try replacement or jumpering across the terminals to turn it on. The 530 might be overheating or broken or jammed fan. Also batteries can do unexplainable things to them if they have some age on them. Would do all testing on adapter power with battery removed

Elmer Fishtwanger
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Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:31 am
Location: Somerset, KY U.S.A.

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#6 Post by Elmer Fishtwanger » Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:01 pm

However bad adapters can do equally strange things... Would also test with battery alone if fails with adapter

atagunov
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Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#7 Post by atagunov » Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:20 pm

Elmer Fishtwanger wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:54 pm
The 420 could possibly be the power switch
If the OP could borrow a docking station from somewhere that would answer the question. Docking station is pretty cheap (£10-15), docking station has its own power switch, the same docking station works for T420 and T530, docking station is very useful - if you have any machines in *20 or *30 generation.. But if the OP is going to sell both machines than purchasing a docking station looks like a questionable suggestion..
X220, 2 *T520

kfzhu1229
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Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#8 Post by kfzhu1229 » Fri Jul 30, 2021 8:10 pm

Elmer Fishtwanger wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:54 pm
The 420 could possibly be the power switch. Being harder to turn on until it wouldn't turn on at all. Maybe try replacement or jumpering across the terminals to turn it on.
You can try to eliminate the possibility of that by plugging the laptop in and see if the battery LED comes on. It should come on briefly even if there's no battery present.
If even that doesn't come on then that shouldn't be a power button issue.
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

Half-Saint
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Posts: 50
Joined: Wed May 08, 2013 10:46 am
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#9 Post by Half-Saint » Fri Aug 06, 2021 5:48 am

I recently bought a T430s as a replacement for the T420 and it came with the docking station. Will give that a try :-)

I was also lucky and found a motherboard for the T420 for 20€ so I went ahead and bought it. Haven't confirmed that it works yet but only after I bought it I realized that it has an nVidia video card. Does anyone know, if this heatsink will fit?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/265245008320?h ... SwITphASZq

I will of course test the motherboard before I invest more money into this.

EDIT #1: I connected the T420 to a docking station and it turned on on second try. It gave me this beeping pattern 1-3-3-1. I'll get back to you on that one. Not sure, if there's any RAM left in the machine or not...

EDIT #2: turns out T420 didn't have any RAM installed. I installed one stick of RAM and got it to start up... displayed the text "ME is in recovery state" before booting to Windows 7. Weird.

Half-Saint
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Joined: Wed May 08, 2013 10:46 am
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#10 Post by Half-Saint » Sun Aug 08, 2021 12:27 pm

I just finished updating the BIOS for T420 and the error "ME is in Recovery State" still pops up.

So far, the laptop turns on consistently. I'm really puzzled about why it refused to turn on in the past...

kfzhu1229
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Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#11 Post by kfzhu1229 » Sun Aug 08, 2021 2:22 pm

Half-Saint wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 12:27 pm
I just finished updating the BIOS for T420 and the error "ME is in Recovery State" still pops up.
Maybe you should've not updated the BIOS and ran me_cleaner to get rid of ME on that thing...
In my recent experience me_cleaner does not work with the microcode patched BIOS revisions
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

Half-Saint
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Posts: 50
Joined: Wed May 08, 2013 10:46 am
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#12 Post by Half-Saint » Sun Aug 08, 2021 3:37 pm

kfzhu1229 wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 2:22 pm
Half-Saint wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 12:27 pm
I just finished updating the BIOS for T420 and the error "ME is in Recovery State" still pops up.
Maybe you should've not updated the BIOS and ran me_cleaner to get rid of ME on that thing...
In my recent experience me_cleaner does not work with the microcode patched BIOS revisions
Bummer. A friend of mine told me that the BIOS update takes care of ME firmware as well...

kfzhu1229
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Location: Toronto, Canada

Re: Thinkpad T530 and T420 repair

#13 Post by kfzhu1229 » Sun Aug 08, 2021 4:51 pm

Half-Saint wrote:
Sun Aug 08, 2021 3:37 pm
Bummer. A friend of mine told me that the BIOS update takes care of ME firmware as well...
You might wanna follow the suggestions in this page, which includes downgrading the BIOS to a version not fixing these security issues: viewtopic.php?f=68&t=129880
If you have signed firmware enabled then you might be stuck short of an external programmer...
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

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