Weird Crash where I can't power off laptop on x220 tablet

[sona1111]

Hello,

I am not sure if this is specific to this model or just general knowledge, feel free to move it if needed.

A few months ago I had this issue similar to what is happening now: the laptop (x220 tablet) shut off while doing standard desktop work. The screen went black but the screen backlight stayed on. The wifi light was off but the bluetooth light was on. Cpu fan running at constant speed. The weird part is that you could not power it off with the "hold the power button down for 10 seconds" shutoff method. The only way to shut down was to unplug the battery and adapter. At this point the machine would not turn on at all and I completely took it apart but in the end I fixed it by replacing the power adapter with another. (This was very strange, because in the process of trying to repair I had attempted to start the machine with battery-only many times, however when I attached the new power adapter it started working)

Anyway, I now have a similar error. Unlike before, the machine will always start after the crash, which is good I guess, but I have had this crash happen with no warning twice within a half hour yesterday, so I am looking for a solution. The machine runs ubuntu linux however the last kernel message before the crashes does not reveal any massive panic, so I am leading toward a hardware issue.

Thanks for reading.

[brchan]

Are the battery and power supply genuine?

[sona1111]

All components came with the used purchase of the machine. The 'look' genuine to me, but I don't know how to tell exactly? Pics below. The problem came back today and the machine would not turn back on. This time I finally managed to get it to work after doing the secret reset method (power button one second pulses, followed by long power button hold while machine is unplugged without battery). This worked this time but it did not work in the past. I just want to avoid a time in the future where it dies completely...


http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p342 ... eseb8o.jpg
http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p342 ... wu34in.jpg
http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p342 ... rbdqii.jpg

[precip9]

I have seen something like this on a desktop where an attached usb device was backfeeding power into the computer. This confused the power management circuitry.

[sona1111]

Thanks for the reply. I use USB very infrequently. Usually the only thing I have plugged in is headphones. The only other new addition to the pc was a 3g card. (gobi 3000, iirc) The last time I had the issue, removing the card did not fix it, but I guess it is possible that this could cause some issue..?