T42 - Motherboard or harddrive issue?

[ccareccia]

All,

I have a T42 and simply took out and put back some extra RAM... Afterward, the laptop wouldnt boot up... two LEDs would come on and the fan. Nothing on the screen. I guess static electricity fried something....

An employee at CompUSA told me it is probably the motherboard and to take out the harddrive and save any data I need. I bought an enclosure and installed everything according to instructions. However, when I plug it into another computer, I cannot see the external harddrive... i know it's running and has power.

My questions are....
- does this sound like a motherboard?
- since I cannot see the harddrive from another computer, does that mean the harddrive is the problem?

Thanks

[agarza]

Maybe your hard disk has a power-on password you set in your Thinkpad? That's the only thing it comes up ATM. External HDD's should not have a password set, because Windows wouldn't recognize they have one.

[ccareccia]

I called Lenovo and they did some troubleshooting... looks like it's some bad memory...

[MikeManley]

1. Bad memory

2. Bad system board

3. Both