T40 display has failed?

[Paladin2]

I booted up my T40 this morning and instead of the usual ThinkPad and Windows screens I was greeted with a white speckled display, then broad vertical stripes with colored boxes with changing colors, and finally ended up with blue vertical stripes with white bars.

The T40 appeared to be booting by the sounds from the hard disk and the display changed over time as described above.

Has anyone seen this same behavior and if so what is the diagnosis? Can this be repaired and and what approximate cost?

Thanks for all your help.

[schen]

Your description sounds more like the all too common GPU failure than the LCD.

If you haven't tried it yet, hook up your machine to an external monitor and see if it give you the same results. If so, you most probably have a failed GPU. If you'll look through the stickies at the top of this conference, they'll answer a lot of your questions.

Sorry about your problem, but; Welcome to the Forum!

[Paladin2]

Your description sounds more like the all too common GPU failure than the LCD.

If you haven't tried it yet, hook up your machine to an external monitor and see if it give you the same results. If so, you most probably have a failed GPU. If you'll look through the stickies at the top of this conference, they'll answer a lot of your questions.

Sorry about your problem, but; Welcome to the Forum!

I will hook it up to an external display as you suggest. I had read the stickies before I posted. It sounds like re-flowing the GPU is not something I want to do. In the T40 does a failed GPU imply a new motherboard?

[schen]

In most case, a bad GPU does imply a new MB if you don't either want to reflow to send it off to one of the outfits that are set up to do that kind of work.

You might have read that even if it outputs correctly on an external monitor, it doesn't necessarily mean that the GPU isn't bad. Sometimes (although rarely), they will output fine to an external monitor, but in most cases, they will not. Strange artifacts are a good tipoff of that happening.

I've had 3 machines with that issue (all 3 A31s); 1 showed garbled screen and output, 1 just needed to warm up and the issue went away, and a current one that shows garbled screen, but outputs fine from the DVI connection on a dock.

[ajkula66]

If you choose to have the machine repaired, contact forum member jamiphar (James) who offers GPU re-balling service with warranty.

He's done it on three ThinkPads for me and I've got nothing but praises to report...

Good luck.