thinkpad 600 only lights up on boot

[gqdarkstar]

i have a thinkpad 600e that recently only will turn on the lights on the computer when turned on. i hear the hard drive spin up (that happens to all hdds when powered up). everything has power, but no beep, no video on screen and even when attached to outside monitor. No ram count sound. just everything powers up. i hear fan. Lcd screen is not cracked or anything like that. what could it be? is it an unseated cpu card maybe? what would cause it to not even show anything on screen or boot?

[JHEM]

1) Change the CMOS battery.

2) Reseat the RAM.

3) Try starting it without the main battery installed.

Regards,

James

[farna]

While I'm thinking about it, is the CMOS battery enough of a problem in a 600E (don't know vintage or if it's been into before) that I should just go ahead and change it before sending the one I have off to the Phillipines??? I might put a 400MHz processor in it anyway since I've worked a trade of the docking station for one. If I should change the CMOS battery may as well while it's open!

[gqdarkstar]

i have a 600 also so i used the cmos battery from there and used the ram from there and i have been turning it on w/o the main battery all along. tried it w/ the battery as well. still no go. the 600 makes a power sound from the speakers when you first turn it on...like a click from the speaker indicating that teh computer is powering up fully..its not a formal beep but rather like a pop sound...the 600e on the other hand does not make this sound. all i hear is the fan turn on, the cd spool up, the hdd spool up and try to load its boot sector. compared to the 600 the 600e does not even show a signal to the screen, no flicker like the 600 does (600 then proceeds to go into the ibm splash screen that says thinkpad and has your detected ram on the top left). the 600e was working fine and just did this one day. i dont know whats going on. it charges the battery fine if you leave it plugged in and everything. just does not post. any further suggestions?

[whizkid]

Remove all the devices you can: battery, anything in the bay, memory, PC cards and disconnect all the ports: USB, serial, parallel, mouse.

If it still doesn't power up, use your hardware maintenance manual and do a power system check. It could be your DC/DC card.

[gqdarkstar]

tested the lcd from teh 600e today by swapping it into my 600...works fine...i cant swap the sub card from the 600e to the 600 because they do not fit the same (there are plastic blockers at the interface that keep you from interchanging them. so far, its not the lcd, its not the cmos battery, its not the battery/power. what else could it be. i would have tried to swap the cpu also but the 600e uses mmc-2 and the 600 uses normal mmc so i couldnt do that. would the system board power up and try to load from optical drive and hdd if it was messed up because it does that. is the card with the lights on it the dc/dc sub card? if so, will this being bad still result in the leds lighting up but the computer not turning on? it would explain no noise comming from the system speaker because the speaker is on there. any help would be appreciated.