T42p doesn't boot - no error message

[mgire]

Hi,

This is my first post
I'm facing a strange problem with my T42p (2373-KTH) for the last 2 days.
I was working and then it crashed (frozen screen/mouse). I had to power it off.
I tried to power it on after few seconds and all I got was :

- the 2 keyboards light turned on and then off . That's OK.
- fan started spinning . That's OK
- ...and that's all !
No error message, no beep, no spinning HD, no DVD combo light.
I could turn it off simply by pushing the on/off button (no need to push and hold for few seconds).
After one hour or so, it worked again.

But today, I got again the same problem.
Laptop is 3 1/2 years old, HD is OK as I have 6 of them and tried them all, motherboad had some problems last year (frozen USB) but kept working well, I don't have any boot virus (I run Linux ).
I know I will have to bring it to IBM repair center this week but I'm too busy right now to do so. So if anyone had already faced the same problem I'll be glad to hear from you.
Thanks.

[lophiomys]

That looks like the classic mainboard flexing problem.
One of mine died while typing heavily ...

You'll probably have to replace your mainboard, but
you have chances to repair it by reflowing your GPU
if that is really the source of the error.
Look at:
Sticky: GUIDE: Reflow GPU fix - 56K WARNING!!!
or
LCD CCFL Backlight Repair/GPU Rework - I'll fix it for you!
or
Reflowing T4x video chipsets

HTH

[poshgeordie]

Tend to agree with lophiomys about it sounding like the old graphics problem.

But may be worth just checking whether it boots to an external monitor display or not. Just to make sure that it's not some weird internal display problem....

[Johan]

Although you may potentially be stuck by the (in!)famous "loose GPU" syndrome, there are yet a few tests that I would personally carry out first, on my own, before taking the heavy (and expensive!) path to the repair centre... as discussed:

If you are able to boot from a CD-ROM, I would strongly suggest you try all the following:

1) Download and burn a bootable CD-ROM with PC Doctor for DOS bootable CD - ThinkPad - and run it numerous times.

2) Download, burn and run (multiple runs!) a bootable CD-ROM with memtest86+.

3) Consider enabling "Extended Memory Test" in the BIOS; see where in the BIOS simulator - ThinkPad T42/p with fingerprint reader (--> Config --> Memory).

If none of this works, you may try remove all peripherals one by one... battery, HDD, CD-RW/DVD, WLAN miniPCI, RAM etc. and see if this has any effect on the situation - by this you may isolate one or more defective unit(s) one by one.

PS: I once had serious problems - similar to what you describe - with a T42p of mine, and it all turned out to be a defective stick of RAM that was the cause - and not the loose GPU, as I (and many other) had suspected. So, from this I have learned... test, test and test all there is to test before handing in mt ThinkPad for repair. A very expensive lesson for me, back then, by the way...

Best of luck with getting your T42p back alive!

Johan

[mgire]

I thought at first it was a BIOS problem so I did a lot of BIOS and memory tests but everything was OK. As I never heard before about the 'loose GPU' I gave it a try: removing the keyboard and pressing on the GPU while turning my laptop on and... it worked.
So I going to check some computer shops in my area to see if they can do the reflow.
Thanks for your help !

[SlamX]

Take a look at this guys reballing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0261784738