t42p hangs on boot then goes to bios

[spotter]

My T42p was working perfectly till right now. I got home and went to boot it up and it just hanged there. ("To Interrupt normal startup, press the blue Access IBM button" screen).

eventually it stops and beeps twice and returns

ERROR
0271: Check date and time settings

Press <F1> to Setup

pressing F1 enters the bios

but nothing seems to help. If I set the time, save and restart, it just hangs again. eventually it goes to grub (I run linux).

I boot linux.

I reboot and it doesnt hang but goes to grub quickly, machine now seems to work normally.

does anyone have idea what happened? I want to do preventitive action to prevent this from propegating if possible.

thanks.

[GomJabbar]

It could be a dead CMOS backup battery. Try replacing that. See the Hardware Maintenance Manual for error codes: beep and non-beep.

Hardware Maintenance Manual - ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p

[richk]

When you get to the BIOS, does it show your RAM correctly? Do you have 2 RAM chips (front and rear)? If so, try one at a time. If you have a spare, try that.

[spotter]

that might be it. Didn't think to check that, but Linux is only showing me 1GB when there should be 2.

[censored].