T41p broke down? (screen and booting problem)

[kosse]

Hi,

My T41p powers up and then after 3 seconds shuts down abruptly. Nothing appears on the screen. It won’t restart until I unplug the battery or power cord.

However, it works perfectly with external display after I unplugged both the inverter and SXGA+ panel cable. If either of those are connected the 3-second problem occurs. Then there’s an exception: The machine will start with it’s own display to the point where windows desktop should appear when I define display as VGA+LCD from BIOS.So the screen seems to be working..to some extent.

Where could the problem be? The machine can’t surely be totally broken since it works with external display. Could it be that inverter has died? I know that it usually causes screen to become dim but this isn’t it, is it?

Any help would be appreciated. I’m off to get some sleep.

[kosse]

Oh, and I haven't used my T41p for hammering nails or anything. It hasn't got any physical damage in it's lifetime as far as I know.

[richk]

I always try the cheapest thing first. It is possible that the inverter is sick and drawing too much power. Try replacing that. (The other likely problem is the motherboard) I have parts lying around, so I would swap the whole screen assembly first.