Lockup Issues with X31 *PICS*

Message

hone · #1 Post by **hone** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 10:53 am

Hi, I'm having issues with my x31 that started yesterday. When I boot it up sometimes the screen doesn't show the Thinkpad screen and just hangs at a blank LCD. After turning it on/off a few times it works again. Then sometimes it just hangs at the Thinkpad screen. If I can get past all this stuff (I entered the setup/bios and it worked) it randomly locks up when using the laptop for some reason that I'm not sure about. It might be related to me moving the laptop? If anyone has any ideas on this it would be much appreciated.

ragefury32 · #2 Post by **ragefury32** » Thu May 03, 2007 1:04 pm

Hm. Sounds like a motherboard fault - are you running NHC (Notebook hardware control) to lower processor voltage? If you are, it's time to back off a little. If you are not, do the usual memory removal/swap dance. If that happens, well, here's what you can do. Run a looping test like memtest86 or IBM's very own diagnostics. Then pick up the Thinkpad and start to gently but firmly press on various spots on the underside, starting with the leftmost bottom corner of the memory bay door. See if there are stress spots that'll cause the test to lock up or bomb back to BIOS. The idea is to see if you can reproduce the issue.

roblim · #3 Post by **roblim** » Fri May 04, 2007 4:56 pm

I'd try a new hard drive. It is very easy to replace the drive on a ThinkPad, just a couple of screws. Standard 2.5" drive.

Voodle · #4 Post by **Voodle** » Fri May 04, 2007 9:59 pm

Hey, I've just started having the exact same problem with my X31 too, oddly coincidental...

However mine had the added problem of bluescreening and giving memory beep errors in the bios, or just not getting to the point of turning the screen on.

I dunno how but somehow I figured out that pressing down on the laptop keyboard made it boot again, turns out that the motherboard's main chipset had come loose in the center of the chip - and since it's BGA that's lots of fun to repair - the thread on the T4x having similar problems: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... c&start=90 - gave me some good clues on what was going wrong and I initially thought it was the video chip too, which it might be in your case, or the CPU. And the service center had added some glue to the corners of the chipset, video chip and CPU on my board when I last had to send it in for servicing (with an unrelated problem)
This happens because the mainboard in the X31 makes up close to the whole width of the laptop so it pretty much gets flexed a little bit every time it's picked up.

Lenovo told me I had no warranty so I set about fixing it myself with the hot-air gun method, I made sure I had a nice flat surface to rest the board on. This took me 4 tries and the last try I gave it around 2 minutes at full blast with a 1500w hot air gun so it's pretty hard for things to go disastrously wrong.

The three chips there, with the chipset being the centre chip were what I wanted to try to fix - I didn't bother with the tinfoil the three following times since nothing on the board is capable of melting before the solder does.
The last try was the one that did the trick and it was different because instead of just hoping that hot air would do the trick, I used a paintbrush as a stick to push down on the centre of the chipset while I heated it. I started off by warming the whole board for a minute or so on medium heat, then put it up to full blast at a 30cm-ish distance for another 30 seconds or so then heated the main chips exclusively for about a minute with the heat gun at a distance of 5-10cm. After that I pressed the end of the paintbrush (not the brush end, I just used it as a stick) onto the centre of the chip with a fair about of pressure - heated it for about 2 minutes as I said, then started to cool it down with ~1 minute at medium heat - while keeping the paintbrush pressed on it the whole time and for another 2-3 minutes after I turned the heat gun off until I felt the board was cool enough that the solder couldnt separate again

A lengthy process and a risky one but it certainly paid off since it seems to be impossible to get mainboards for X31s now. Now my X31 is fully functional again

That's just my experience though and although hopefully it might help you, it could also be the CPU itself or some other component that's failing, you'll be able to tell though by applying pressure to different parts of the laptop/mainboard and seeing if it helps at all - in my case I had a pretty simple example of 'working' and not working since as soon as I stopped pressing on the chipset directly (while watching the memory count) it would stop

#5 Post by **rkawakami** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:35 pm

It appears that you have duplicated the recommended heating profile for reworking BGA packages:

The heat required to reflow the solder is typically around 230c.

Voodle · #6 Post by **Voodle** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:47 pm

hehe, unintentional but I did read as much as I could about the process before I tried it.

ragefury32 · #7 Post by **ragefury32** » Mon May 14, 2007 5:13 pm

Yeah, sounds about right. The X31 "Tokyo" design does have that massive i855PM chipset dead in the center...and if that thing develops a cold solder it'll tend to die. This is another reason to consider buying the X30 series "tray" ultrabase battery - it makes the machine much stiffer and more resilient to crap like that.

clayton.bigsby · #8 Post by **clayton.bigsby** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 9:38 am

I apologize for digging up this over year old post, but my X31 just fell victim to the gpu loose solder issue. So far, the laptop would work so long as it sits on a desk, but the screen would lock up every time I move it. I ran some tests with PC Doctor and everything checked out except during the video test. It would lock up during the wire frame exercise.

I didn't know exactly what the problem was at first, but I assumed that it might be the cpu/gpu over heating, so I took it apart and applied silver compound on the cpu. The gpu had a thermal pad so I didn't do much with that except I noticed there was an air bubble underneath it so I squeezed it out. I've also noticed some corrosion on some of the contacts (not around the gpu, but elsewhere on the motherboard) so I tried to clean it with a Q-tip and 70% rubbing alcohol (is 70% alcohol safe for motherboards?).

I put the machine back together and the video test in PC Doctor would run fine, BUT this is when I noticed that it would lock up whenever I picked it up. So I came here and did a search looking for answers. I've read about the very thorough post regarding the T4x thinkpads and the flex issues and how a heat gun and infrared thermometer MIGHT fix it so I am now in the process of acquiring both items. The procedure sounds simple enough, but my only question is do I remove the thermal pad from the GPU before heating or can I just leave it on? Would it melt into a gooey mess at 230C?

With less than a month till the start of school, this was freaking me out. Although I still have a T21 as a backup, I've gotten used to the small size of the X31 and I almost bought an X6x to replace it (still thinking about it actually), but it just seems like a waste for me since I know I could have used the X31 for at least the next two to three years. I'm just disappointed that this had to happen to a ThinkPad.

ragefury32 · #9 Post by **ragefury32** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:41 pm

clayton.bigsby wrote:I apologize for digging up this over year old post, but my X31 just fell victim to the gpu loose solder issue. So far, the laptop would work so long as it sits on a desk, but the screen would lock up every time I move it. I ran some tests with PC Doctor and everything checked out except during the video test. It would lock up during the wire frame exercise.

I didn't know exactly what the problem was at first, but I assumed that it might be the cpu/gpu over heating, so I took it apart and applied silver compound on the cpu. The gpu had a thermal pad so I didn't do much with that except I noticed there was an air bubble underneath it so I squeezed it out. I've also noticed some corrosion on some of the contacts (not around the gpu, but elsewhere on the motherboard) so I tried to clean it with a Q-tip and 70% rubbing alcohol (is 70% alcohol safe for motherboards?).

I put the machine back together and the video test in PC Doctor would run fine, BUT this is when I noticed that it would lock up whenever I picked it up. So I came here and did a search looking for answers. I've read about the very thorough post regarding the T4x thinkpads and the flex issues and how a heat gun and infrared thermometer MIGHT fix it so I am now in the process of acquiring both items. The procedure sounds simple enough, but my only question is do I remove the thermal pad from the GPU before heating or can I just leave it on? Would it melt into a gooey mess at 230C?

With less than a month till the start of school, this was freaking me out. Although I still have a T21 as a backup, I've gotten used to the small size of the X31 and I almost bought an X6x to replace it (still thinking about it actually), but it just seems like a waste for me since I know I could have used the X31 for at least the next two to three years. I'm just disappointed that this had to happen to a ThinkPad.

You're disappointed that it happened to a 5 year old Thinkpad?
It happens.
Anyways, the heat gun treatment is really under your own discretion. I melted an X31 motherboard with an air gun, so YMMV.

virtualsim · #10 Post by **virtualsim** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:49 pm

ragefury32 wrote:
You're disappointed that it happened to a 5 year old Thinkpad?
It happens.

Some of them are only about 3.5 years old, it's not that old by Thinkpad longevity standards.

clayton.bigsby · #11 Post by **clayton.bigsby** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:46 am

ragefury32 wrote: You're disappointed that it happened to a 5 year old Thinkpad?
It happens.
Anyways, the heat gun treatment is really under your own discretion. I melted an X31 motherboard with an air gun, so YMMV.

Considering that my T21 from 2001 is still working fine (even though using it for some apps can be painful), yes, I am disappointed that my X31 died on me with no physical abuse, especially since it's a ThinkPad. Maybe it's just me, but I expect ThinkPads to be able to last more than 5 years if well taken care of.

The good news is that I did try the airgun fix and it's now back up and running. A couple of plastic pieces did warp out of shape. I forgot to remove the compact flash cover so that melted and the CF ejector doesn't work now. It's not a big deal though. I got a 2GB CF to replace the CF cover. Other than that it's been working for a month now, but it feels like a ticking time bomb. I wonder how long it'll last.

GpsPasSion · #12 Post by **GpsPasSion** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:17 pm

Wonder if I'm not having a similar problem on the replacement X31 1.7GHz I got in June for a pittance. It suddenly BSOD'd so I rebooted it and just as it was about to load XP it did it again. Tried swapping the RAM with my original X31/1.4Ghz but same problem, so I swapped the HD and am not having any issues with my x31/1.4... I have since proceeded to run Prime95 on my x31/17Ghz and it's not locking up, after reading this thread I tried shaking it up and...it's still running strong, doesn't make sense for a computer to have that problem and then not having it anymore, but hey that works for me !

paulipeura · #13 Post by **paulipeura** » Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:10 pm

Hello everybody!

I would just like to report that this evening I have heated up problematic x31 motherboard. I used well adjustable 2000 W hot air gun and Fluke 179 multimeter for temperature measurement. I wrapped the motherboards well into tinfoil and heated the ATI GPU and the chip next to it (chipset?, just in case!) within about 5-7 mins up to 225 C. Also few minutes of slowly cooling down of the chips was done until about 140 C was reached, then the hot air gun was switched off.

Below is a picture of my method.

Close to the to-be-warmed-up chips I had five layers of tinfoil to keep away excess heat from the plastic parts of the motherboard. This solution seemed to have been enough, because no visible damage was done.

-- Pauli Peura

paulipeura · #14 Post by **paulipeura** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:16 pm

Just a quick update:

The mobo with 1.4 GHz processor started misbehaving again today afternoon. The problem of freezing at the start goes away always when a little bit of pressure is applied on to the chipset (the chip in the middle of the three). I actually concentrated most of my blowing to the GPU, but it seems that the reason was next to it

.
I'll have to try to do the heating up part for the chipset again.

chronage · #15 Post by **chronage** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:19 pm

I came across this thread after getting the 4-4-4-4 beep code. Could not get it to boot unless i pushed down on the keyboard. Eventually, even that didn't work.

In desperation mode I used a hair dryer on the chipset (a 1600W one mind you) I was off and running within 30 mins. Boots up everytime.

GpsPasSion · #16 Post by **GpsPasSion** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 5:11 am

GpsPasSion wrote:Wonder if I'm not having a similar problem on the replacement X31 1.7GHz I got in June for a pittance. It suddenly BSOD'd so I rebooted it and just as it was about to load XP it did it again.

I think I've nailed the problem, it locks up and BSOD's (IRQ error) on boot inwhen it heats up, but surprisinly enough ONLY when placed on a "lap mount" or on my actual lap. I guess it doesn't get ventilated well enough in these conditions. Placed on a desk it can run Prime95 hours on end.

Anyone know what could be causing this ?

#17 Post by **Harryc** » Sun Nov 23, 2008 7:56 am

What is the CPU temp while running Prime95 on your lap?
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Sys ... eter.shtml

Lockup Issues with X31 PICS

Lockup Issues with X31 PICS

Who is online