T43 non-hard drive freezing problem

[pablonice]

Hi all,

Calling upon your expertise. I've got a T43 running Windows XP. About a month ago it started to freeze. The case was cracked so I though it was the hard drive. Replaced it and replaced the case. Had the same problem. The laptop runs fine for maybe 3-4 hours and then the screen freezes. After freezing you can't get it to boot; when you turn it on and off it will just sit and cycle. However, if you leave it off for a couple of days, sometimes I'll come back and it will turn on, boot, and then run for a little bit before freezing again. I'm sure its not the harddrive because both the original and the newly installed one work fine on other t43s. Could it be something related to the monitor/vga card? Any suggestions?

Best,
Brian

[Neil]

If you tell us the full seven character type number for this T43 we can probably be of more help.

The most common causes on T4x series would be:
1) Overheating because of a failed CPU fan.
2) Solder ball array (BGA) failure on either an ATI GPU (less common in T43) or Southbridge chip, or both.
3) Hard drive and/or software issues. Which you have ruled out already, right?

[pablonice]

hi neil

i made a mistake in the original post, it is a T40 not 43. then type is 2373-8CU (i think that's the number you were asking for).

as far as i know its not software related. before the problem i didnt make any recent software or hardware changes.

[Neil]

Here is the original description of that ThinkPad as it left the factory:

Code: Select all

ThinkPad T40 (2373-8CU)
P M 1.5GHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB 5400rpm HDD, 14.1 XGA(1024x768) TFT LCD, 32MB ATI Radeon 7500, 24x-8x DVD(slim), Modem(CDC), Ethernet(LOM), Wireless upgradeable, Secure Chip(TCPA), UltraNav, 6 cell battery, WinXP Pro

I think we can be fairly certain it's a BGA failure. It's becoming very common with the Radeon 7500 boards.

I have a couple of brand new, never installed, system boards for those ThinkPads. Send me a PM if you decide you want to replace the board in that machine.