blink of death

[boyd18]

i'm new here and didn't know where to put this, so be easy on me...

i've been browsing these forums and have come across this blink of death problem that some thinkpads have...what i'd like to know is, what are the symptoms of this?

i ask because i recently bought a A22E off ebay for pretty cheap....its in great shape and does power on and show video but, when it gets to the splash screen it will just hang there for a few seconds and then seemingly reset itself....it does this every time and sometimes it will go crazy and start resetting itself rapidly...after doing that for a few secs it will go back to the reset it self every few seconds...

its kinda hard to explain...just figured i'd see if the blink of death is the same problem this a22e is having...

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

The "Blink of Death" (BoD) is mainly characterized by the following:

- upon pressing the power button the hard drive LED flashes for 1/10 second
- system does not even get to the IBM "splash" screen
- no other visual (LEDs lighting, screen turning on, etc.) or audible indications (fan spinning, beeps, etc.) that the system is alive
- will sometimes boot and work normally; usually after the battery and AC adapter has been removed for several days

Your problem appears to be different than the typical BoD. Could be anything to do with the power system from the AC adapter to the motherboard. I'm not aware of any specific problem area to look into with this type of malfunction. Best course of action I can provide is to remove all "extra" hardware from the system and see what happens. This means pull the battery, hard drive, any Ultrabay drive and easily removable "daughter" cards (MiniPCI, ethernet, modem, etc.) and then try powering up with the AC adapter and see if that makes any difference. If you have a voltmeter, measure the voltage at the DC plug and see if it's 16V. If you have another adapter, try that one instead.