T42 Display/Video Problems, hardware/software?

T4x series specific matters only
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eighteen_psi
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T42 Display/Video Problems, hardware/software?

#1 Post by eighteen_psi » Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:17 pm

Hey all, my beloved T42 has started acting up recently. I originally had it pegged as a driver issue but it's progressed to the point where i'm pretty confident it's some manner of a hardware problem.

As far as symptoms, it started off as the display (but not the backlight) turning off for no apparent reason). It started doing this shortly after I installed Vista and it was usually related to when I pulled power and went to battery.

Since then, its been doing it more, but not often - but again with no apparent rhyme or reason. It's also started artifacting sometimes - but not all the time, when the display comes back on after going off. Now why do I have it worked down to hardware? Well, last night it did this quite a bit and it turned out pressing or twisting on the left palmrest will get my display back when it's gone :(

On top of that, whatever it's doing on the LCD, it does on an external monitor, so it's not the inverter or whatever else. I ran PC Doctor and it reported video memory falied...when it's 'doing' this thing. When it isn't, video memory reports as fine. Regardless of the situation, the system performs perfectly (assuming the artifacts don't irritate me too much) - it never hangs. Similarly, when it isn't doing this, no amount of twistingthing else will upset it in the least. I'm confused :o

It doesn't seem heat-related exactly, because i can hammer it for hours at work without an issue - and that's heavy media work. But on the other hand, after a night of being off, it always works great for a time before it starts acting up, when it does - as if it were eventually crossing some threshold and starting to artifact.

Finally, when it's doing this nonsense, it does it everywhere - windows software and hardware rendered areas, bios, boot screen, everything. Meh.

Ideas? Anything else I should to do narrow this down or try before sending it in for service?

GomJabbar
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#2 Post by GomJabbar » Sat Jun 23, 2007 7:14 pm

This is a well known problem. See the following Sticky: t42 shuts down when i move it: Basically, the solder joints are failing on the Graphics chip which is a Ball Grid Array chip. There are some fixes in the Sticky above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array
DKB

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