T42 screen and keyboard turns off randomly !?!?

[zetheroo]

A couple days ago my T42 had this problem:

The screen randomly switches off - completely off - no back light whatsoever - at the same time the keyboard stops working in that the CAPS lock light does not come on when I hit CAPS lock - the rest of the system seems to be running fine still - if I am listening to music or watching a video I can still hear it playing and the wifi LED still blinks if I am browsing the net before the "crash" of the screen and keyboard.

I have to do a hard power off/on to restart. Sometimes it stays on for hours and other times it off within minutes. Sometimes you can move it around and it will stay on, other times if you lightly tap the palm rest the screen and keyboard go "POOF".

Any ideas?

[ajkula66]

Loose GPU syndrome at one of its most typical guises...

Read the sticky "My T42 shuts down..." and others related to GPU failures on T4x machines...

Good luck.

[zetheroo]

Thanks for the reply ajkula66

I found this page (http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... _lockup_II) and it summed up my issue exactly. - Although the only reason my keyboard was locking up with the screen was because I was running Linux and when the GPU failed it must have made X crash ... which takes with it the keyboard and mouse etc...

So I found out about the issue with the GPU and some clips on YouTube of the board being heated which solves the issue for some. Here is what I did ... turned the system on with the keyboard unscrewed and the palmrest removed altogether. I waited for the GPU to heat up and then (by accident) nudged the laptop, and sure enough the screen turned off, leaving the rest of the laptop still running. I then used the back end of a pen with some folded paper to press down on the GPU ... hoping the screen would come back to life ... but it didn't, until I rebooted that is. Since then it has been running fine and has not turned off even after being nudged and picked up on both front corners with the lid open.

What did me pressing down on the GPU do to make it work again?