System board quality control?

[jl209]

I've now had 2 system boards fail in my T42. I got my thinkpad last June, and in February, 8 months later, I started having crashes and ATI2dvag errors. IBM said it was a defective Radeon 9600 and replaced the system board.

Just last week, my computer froze with lines across the display. After I restarted, every time I lightly tapped the machine or moved the screen, it would go blank and hang. First tech support thought it was the HD Active Protection malfunctioning, but later abandoned that theory. My computer now has it's 3rd system board and seems to be doing ok (except that I forgot to deauthorize the last one in iTunes before it was removed and now can't play my purchased music!)

Does anyone know what the odds are of having multiple failing system boards? Is it likely that something else is malfunctioning in my Thinkpad and causing the system boards to die? Or is there just a serious quality control problem?

I've been talking with a guy in IBM Executive Relations. (I got in touch with after emailing on the the IBM website.) He's been somewhat accomodating, but refused to replace my computer. The tech who fixed my ThinkPad yesterday said that IBM has an unannounced policy of replacing it if they can't fix it after the 3rd time. With its track record of failing system boards, I'm betting this happens.

[K. Eng]

My T40 is on it's 3rd system board as well. First board failed in March 2004, about 10 months after I bought the system. The second board failed due to a bad Radeon 7500 GPU in November 2004, a mere 6 months later. The third board has not had any problems so far.

I've been a bit skeptical about the system boards since this has happened to me, but most others I know with T4x systems haven't had any problems. I tend to think it is just bad luck...

[KillaByte]

Yeah - I got my third system board, too. First one caused system hangs, second one produced garbled sound.

[JHEM]

My T40 is on it's 3rd system board as well.

As is my T40 also. All were due to problems with the video card.

PITA to have to send it in, but it was repaired and returned relatively quickly each time.

My T41 machines and my sole T42 haven't had any problems yet, knock wood.

Regards,

James

[Kenn]

I replied in my thread, but for the benefit of users searching the topic, just yesterday my T42p started doing the same thing - freezing with horizontal line artifacts if I touch the machine or swivel the LCD display.