T42 shuts down when i move it

[madkat]

i'll try some more to find a thermo...
allthough it's very hard with ebay orders...

btw - why does on battery pass ALL graphics tests - all the animations etc. - and on AC it behaves as stated above?

edit: i've figured out why it passes the tests on battery
because the "powerplay" is activated, and the GPU runs "slower" - if i deactivate the powerplay - it shuts down when running the tests running on battery too
doesn't that indicate a faulty GPU or GRAM?

[madkat]

after an unsucessful reflow... i did a mobo swap with an intel-gpu R51 board
details on the dedicated topic

[wvdgaast]

Bah. I don't like this problem, and I also lost my belief in IBM a little bit because of it. I had this repaired in April this year, and only three months later the problem came back!! Had it fixed again, and I'm counting down the months again. And my warranty is really going to expire soon now.

The problem is, they're not always installing new main boards, often they just use old ones from other laptops. And since the only thing you can be sure about with this problem is that it's going to show up on *every* ATI board, I'm sure I'll have a brick again soon.

Also, the last repair wasn't very good since every now and then when I move the laptop or adjust the screen, the screen contents shifts somewhat up/down for a tenth of a second (too short to see what happens exactly). Does anyone know about that problem? Possibly that's just a matter of a cable not fully attached?

(Also, they forgot to reset the serial number information on my motherboard to the machine's actual number, dmidecode now reports the number of the previous laptop it was in.)

[McLuvin]

Just fixed my t42 but I'm pretty sure mine wasn't video related. Sometimes when I'm playing games on the laptop it shuts down intermittently with no warning and at first I thought it was video related but I lifted it up from the front corner with one hand and it worked fine and I wasn't getting the bsod or any other errors, also it didn't seem to matter if I ran it at the default 600mhz or the full 2.0ghz it would shutdown either way.

I did some researching on here before and learned of the video issue and also found out about a program called Speedfan that you can use to monitor the temp. The hard drive seems normal enough but the other one went through the roof so I figured it was an overheating issue.

I then decided to take it apart and clean it real good for starters. When I got inside and took off the fan and copper heatsink I noticed the thermal paste on the cpu had all melted down around the sides so I used some AS5 compound that I had left over from previous builds and cleaned the machine out using compressed air from a can. Been using it for two days now and it hasn't randomly shutdown as of yet, also I've been running this thing at full speed to boot. When I run at full speed I only do so when it's plugged in and also I have an antec notebook cooler for it to help with the excess heat that it's not designed to run at.

[madkat]

the random shut down happened to me also - even after the R51 mobo transplant... in the first hour of life of the newborn Frankenpad...
it turned out to be old thermal paste... stupid me has forgotten to replace it... being eager to see if it works
weird thing though... NHC didnt show temperatures above 60 C before shutdown... so the CPU protection temperature is "read" from a separate sensor

[lukkbox]

your hard disk is protected by an anti shock protection mechanism

moving the laptop can set this off, a bit like the way the old personal cd players would pause for a while

its there for your hard drives protection and is triggreed by sudden movements

you can alter its sensitivty if your on a bumpy road for instance and want it off


cant remember how though , google it sir, like scooby doo

[fje]

Yes pne more with similar problem.

A couple of weeks ago I started to suffer the problem of my T42 blocking randomly. The simtom usually is to have some lines of mouvements in the display, mouse blocks and everythinks locks and blocks. Only solution is poweroff and restart, and many times it doesn't start.

Solution found thenka sto this forum is to press in the blue key of the mouse in the keyboard... so, ATI chip....

I have tried the post-it papers solution, but it doesn't work 100% of the times, system is always unstable. Moreover, it depends of the amount of paper put. Too much is as bad as too few...

So, I will stay with this solution for the time being, but in the futur I will have to go to the reballing solution. I'm not prepared to do it by myself (even I'm somehow techy, but not so much), and after looking and not foinding a local solution, I found thru eBay the following ones:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... TQ:US:1123

Does anyone have any experience/feedback related to this "seller"/supplier that would help?

Thanks and kind regards.

[McLuvin]

for anyone that has their t42 apart it's a really good idea while you are in there to use new thermal paste on the cpu, mine has been working great since from my last post.

[Nameless]

Yes pne more with similar problem.

A couple of weeks ago I started to suffer the problem of my T42 blocking randomly. The simtom usually is to have some lines of mouvements in the display, mouse blocks and everythinks locks and blocks. Only solution is poweroff and restart, and many times it doesn't start.

Solution found thenka sto this forum is to press in the blue key of the mouse in the keyboard... so, ATI chip....

I have tried the post-it papers solution, but it doesn't work 100% of the times, system is always unstable. Moreover, it depends of the amount of paper put. Too much is as bad as too few...

So, I will stay with this solution for the time being, but in the futur I will have to go to the reballing solution. I'm not prepared to do it by myself (even I'm somehow techy, but not so much), and after looking and not foinding a local solution, I found thru eBay the following ones:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... TQ:US:1123

Does anyone have any experience/feedback related to this "seller"/supplier that would help?

Thanks and kind regards.

Well, Superior Reball is beginning to make a good name for themselves here, they seem to be good and inexpensive. Search for their name on the forum. Also longtime forum member Jamiphar already has an excellent reputation for fixing this problem but he's a little more expensive. Search for his company name Arndt Computer Services.

[fje]

Hi,

have a look to my post at:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73945
or either:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 51#p497851

Specially for those in the European zone of influence.

Rgds.

[devanshoom]

I am no expert, but i had exactly the same kind of thing happen to me on my t40. The problem started after I replaced the 1.3 cpu with a 1.7 cpu i got second hand on ebay. When i got it back from the place that did the swap it would just go black screen at the slightest touch, especially if i tried moving it. The thing i couldnt work out was if you picked it up a shook it about, then booted it, it would be okay for about an hour but then it would just start doing the same thing...blanking at the slightest of movements.

The problem was finally fixed by taking out the new 1.7 cpu and putting the old 1.3 back in...was fine after that

dunno if this helps


man i love the way i keep getting prompted to sign in and then lose everything i wrote. does that happen to you guys too?

[induktor]

Hello.
I posted here a while ago about my T40 with video glitches due to the famous GPU solder problem.

I tried resolder with a heat gun, and killed one of my boards, the other board partially revived and failed 3 weeks later.

this keeps bugging me all these months, so finally i decide to buy a hot air rework station, (which I will also use when i repair things, or at least that was the excuse )

I tried to resolder now with the real hot air solder station, worked for 2 months without a problem and now again, same as before, all kind of crap in the video on all outputs.

Obviously this is not going to cut it, so i try something different:

I build a smal piece of aluminium, 2 mm thick, with two holes, the idea is: using the mounting separators from the keyboard (the two below the mouse buttons) as a guide, I put 2 springs on those ones and below the piece of aluminium, in direct contact with the GPU.

It will not move because the two keyboard separators acts as a guide, and also hold the springs into position.

I would love to take a picture, but since it works, I don't want to dissasemble it, but if anyone want it, I can draw the idea on paper and post the photo here, so it will be more clear than explaining by words by someone like me with a terrible english

so far so good... I will post a couple of weeks later to report how did it go

I forgot to mention, the piece of aluminium, besides to provide constant pressure to the GPU, also act as a small heatsink (I applied thermal grease between them) so it should help in intensive graphics use too.

c-u
indkt.

[bass1175]

I just started getting the same problem, my notebook freezes when I move in the slightest fashion. I still have warranty available, can IBM try to get out of replacing the motherboard on this issue? Thats my fear is that somehow theyll blame it on me, will call tomorrow and update you guys.

[rookworm]

To those who tried the case stuffing/ physical pressure solution:

any updates? which of you are still going with that solution, which of you have dead laptops??

[RealBlackStuff]

If your machine is still under warranty, you should call immediately.
IBM/Lenovo or their service partners should replace the mobo without any problems.
If you are out of warranty, I (and other forum members) have had excellent results by having the mobo reballed by GPU Medics (formerly known as Superior Reball).
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0544539041
If the auction is out of date, look for the relisted item.

For Europe or the UK, see here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73945

[iambtk]

well....it's a problem...

[zetheroo]

A couple days ago my T42 had this problem:

The screen randomly switches off - completely off - no back light whatsoever - at the same time the keyboard stops working in that the CAPS lock light does not come on when I hit CAPS lock - the rest of the system seems to be running fine still - if I am listening to music or watching a video I can still hear it playing and the wifi LED still blinks if I am browsing the net before the "crash" of the screen and keyboard.

I have to do a hard power off/on to restart. Sometimes it stays on for hours and other times it off within minutes. Sometimes you can move it around and it will stay on, other times if you lightly tap the palm rest the screen and keyboard go "POOF".

Any ideas?

[pianowizard]

Hi,

Those of you who managed to fix your T42's loose GPU problem with a stack of paper, would you please go to this thread and particpate in the poll? I did this trick two days ago and so far so good. I plan to keep using this T42 until the problem returns, so I am curious how long this temporary solution may last for.