T43 weird constant lockup; fix with shaking laptop

[gtcardw]

Hello, I have a really strange problem with my T43. First off, specs are:

2.0 ghz
Stock 80gb 5400rpm hd
Radeon x300
1400x1050 resolution display
2GB crucial ddr2 333 ram (my own upgrade)

As you can see, everything is stock besides the ram I upgraded when I first bought this laptop. I have had this laptop for almost 2 years now, and I bought it used in excellent condition from eBay. Recently, just last night actually, my laptop started locking up, intermittedly at first, then constantly. What I mean is, the laptop completely freezes, until I shake it. Then it resumes whatever it was doing. For example, this happened once while windows was booting up, during the startup chime sound. It froze for about 10 seconds, then I shoke it and it resumed playing the chime from where it stopped, and windows continued to load. I thought this may be windows related, but the same problem occurs when I am in the BIOS, which leads me to believe there's some sort of hardware failure. The question is which: I am as much looking for a solution to this as I am looking for insight on how to begin. Can this be a heat issue? And if it is, what can I do about it? The random nature of the problem makes it difficult to troubleshoot because I cannot reliably reproduce it; shaking the laptop fixes it every time though. Can this be the active drive protection system malfunctioning? Is this system active in the BIOS? The only consistency so far is that if and when this problem occurs, it occurs more and more frequently; sometimes the freezes are about 1 second apart.

[ausmike]

Hi gt'...

I assume you running Std Xp loaded from factory.....so you do a RECOVERY via "blue button" ..........
I suspect freeze like u described is what I had few years ago = HARD DRIVE BAD BLOCKS and Hard Drive change would be a nice way to fix it !

umm could be various things also> so I would download this tool<its excellent> and works nicely... Run and check results......
System ToolBox = http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 67520.html

Heaps of pple have done 'upgraqdes' to their HD on T4x ,,,, I have a T43 with SSD , runs nicely and works great!

Good Luck

[poshgeordie]

Hi gtcardw and welcome to the forums.

The symptoms you're describing are typical of an unsoldered southbridge chip. In my work I see this more and more on T43's, and I would put it as being almost equal to the graphics chip problem with this particular model.

It is recognised by one or more of the following symptoms:

1. On boot up there's no picture and the laptop doesn't appear to go through the boot sequence. When pressing the on/ off button, the laptop immediately powers down - this compares with needing to hold the button down for 5 seconds to power off. Note that this symptom can also be due to other problems.

2. Laptop boots and the hard disk starts loading the OS but keeps appearing to hang until you press on the centre of the palmrest (typically). Associated with this, the OS can freeze during use and again pressing the palmrest causes it to continue to work.

3. Clicking sounds from the speakers. Also distorted sound from them.

4. And the common problem of the USB port changing to USB 1.1.

To test if this is the problem, remove the palmrest and wireless card. The southbridge chip is the square Intel chip under the wireless card.
Gently pressing down on the southbridge chip when the OS freezes etc, and the hard disc starts up again.

I wouldn't really suggest shaking the laptop because it could cause the graphics chip to become unsoldered as well.

To fix this there are companies mentioned in the forums in the US who do reflowing.

[ajkula66]

Try removing the hard drive and see whether the freezing goes away.

If it doesn't (which would be my expectation), then Nick is correct and you have a loose southbridge chip.

Good luck

[gtcardw]

Thank you all for the replies.

This is my 2nd thinkpad; I love these laptops to death. I'm just glad I'm not alone in this. I just bought a ssd for my thinkpad too, and if this continues to happen after I swap the drive, then I will have to look into the southbridge problem. I really hoped this would have been something I can fix on my own, but historically, that doesn't seem to be the case when it comes to me and electronics.

The southbridge problem sounds more and more probable, because I have begun to notice that usually immediately preceeding the first "freeze" I get, I have moved the laptop slightly. It makes sense then, that sudden movement sometimes dislodge the southbridge. The next time this happens, I will try the palm rest thing to further confirm.

Again, thank you all for giving me a place to start.

[gtcardw]

I am able to confirm that this is the loose southbridge problem Nick stated. I have experienced individual and sometimes a combination of the symptoms he's stated, and they are indeed "cured" when I press down on the palm rest. At this point, I don't think I want to risk doing a reflow, because my luck with electronics is abysmal at best. I will most likely put my laptop up for sale on eBay, as-is.

[Harryc]

You would be better off parting it out and selling the parts on the Marketplace forum here. If you don't want to take the time to do that, at least try to sell the entire machine here first and give us a crack at buying it. Thanks.