Thinkpads Forum

I get the Lenovo splash screen on my X270 but the os fails to load. I solved the problem initially by de-powering the machine for 15-minutes and then re-booting. But the “fix” only lasted 8 or 10 start-ups. When it failed a second time, I unplugged, removed the battery and held down the reset button. Same thing happened: I got about 8 normal start-ups before the problem reoccurred. But now I'm stuck... neither method is working and Manjaro won't load up. None of the keys function, can't get to the terminal or bootload manager or anything else.
I might be wrong but I assume this is a hardware problem. Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated.
Katie

Can you get to the BIOS/UEFI diagnostics? Run some tests on the HDD/SSD and the RAM. If you have another computer and a spare (empty) USB flash drive (even an old <1GB drive is fine), go to https://memtest.org/ and download the USB installer. Run that program to create a bootable USB disk that runs memtest86+. It's a more thorough RAM test than the BIOS.

Thanks for taking the time to help but no... I can't get into BIOS. None of the keys function.
Katie

Remove all the drives (HDD/SSD) and see if you can get to BIOS setup. Dying disks can stall the computer.

Thank you axur...I pulled the RAM card and the SSD and tried, unsuccessfully, to open BIOS and the Boot Loader. Nothing would open but a did get a nice musical melody.
I put everything back and inserted my Manjaro live stick and rebooted tapping the Shift Key. The Boot Loader opened and I booted to the stick. I did the memory test on the i5 Processor and there were no errors.
The computer is working now, but I’m not sure for how long. I can open BIOS.
What would you like me to do next?
Katie

Of course the laptop won't boot without any RAM installed (I said remove the SSD/HDD only).

The musical notes you heard are error codes that can be decoded by a mobile app supplied by Lenovo. But in your case it definitely means RAM error since you don't have any installed.

To be honest, it's hard to pin down intermittent issues like what your X270 has, but I'm willing to bet it's the RAM. Why? I've noticed that older laptops and desktops with DDR4 (2016-2018) are coming down with RAM errors, most likely the memory chips are starting to fail due to age.

Silly me!
I swapped out the original RAM for 16G a few weeks back. The card came from a three year old computer, so should be good but who knows, maybe it wasn’t seated properly. Anyway, the computer is running now so we’ll see. Is there any kind of repair utility I can run? Anything else to try at this point?
Thanks,
Katie