T30 booting to blank screen - bad RAM or something else?

[itty01]

Hi,
New to this forum. I tried searching for similar problems but couldn't find anything close. Apologies if it's an obvious problem.

I have a T30, 4 years old, outside the warranty period. All was well with it until one day, when it was on, it just shut off. From then on, it would let me boot up, but after a while, it would always shut down (I believe it just powered down without going through any shutdown scripts).

Now, it hardly ever boots up. It powers up, but only to a blank screen. Once in a while, it does begin to boot, but I never make it to the desktop.

So I'm wondering what the problem is. My guess is bad RAM, but I have no idea. I tried booting to Memtest, which seemed to reveal some failures, but I couldn't really decipher the output (I'm not the most computer-savvy person, yet not the most computer illiterate either).

My question is mainly, should I just replace this RAM and hope that solves the problem?

Thanks for any help
-Itty

[ronbo613]

It powers up, but only to a blank screen.

My T30 was just doing that same thing, it was a defective system board.
Hope that's not your problem. Can you borrow some memory and try it out?

[itty01]

It powers up, but only to a blank screen.

My T30 was just doing that same thing, it was a defective system board.
Hope that's not your problem. Can you borrow some memory and try it out?

I wish. All my tech-type friends have gone away since college graduation, thus I've become less knowledgeable and don't have friends that have extra memory cards.

Since I'm lacking in resources, is it a better idea to look for a new laptop? I can get a decent educational discount because I work for a university