T40 odd problem, please help..

[lithium726]

Alright, so I've got this T40 that kind of fell into my hands... Everything works, most of the time. Thing is, it will randomly freeze and then refuse to boot up, but if you grab it on the upper left side and apply a moment upwards (ie, torquing the entire chassis up a bit) it'll boot and run just fine, until it decides to freeze again or you move it significantly. I know it's not the video chip (no corruption at all, putting pressure on the chip doesn't do anything, powers ext monitor just fine, etc)

I thought it was the security chip for a little while because it has a bit of a loose connection, but i shoved some paper under there to keep it securely connected and it's exhibiting the same behavior. I'm really at a loss and I'd like to get this thing working again so I can sell it, does anyone have any ideas or are there any common problems around this area that I can look into and fix up?

[ajkula66]

Motherboard replacement or solder re-flow in the GPU area are your only solutions. This is an extremely well-known problem with T4x series...read the sticky "My T42 shuts down when I move it" and you'll get some of the flavour...

Good luck.

[lithium726]

Yeah, except it's not the video chip. I tested that by putting a load on the top and bottom of the chip to keep it mated to the board, it did nothing. The video chip can be poked and whatnot during operation and it keeps on chugging away. It's some component somewhere in the area above the CPU, I'm guessing one of the PWM components.