Motherboard? See new post at bottom

[Me2]

I had problems with my r61e laptop for the past two days after having left it off for the majority of 3 days. I was having problems starting programs I would click and wait and wait. Yesterday it froze so I pressed Control alt delete to try to get the task manager to come up. The task manager would not come up so I pressed the power button and now when I try to turn the laptop on the screen stays black and it does about 4-6 beeps and then just sits there. I called the lenovo company and was told that the motherboard is shot. Does it sound like this is the case or could it be something else?

[rkawakami]

"4-6 beeps"? If the beep sequence is 1-3-3-1 (one beep, pause, 3 beeps, pause, 3 beeps, pause and one beep), then that means it could be a memory problem. Best suggestion I can give at the moment would be to remove all memory modules and anything that's installed on the motherboard via a connector (hard drive, Ultrabay, PCMCIA, MiniPCI card, etc.) and then power up the system. If you get the 1-3-3-1 beep sequence then that means that at least the most basic power systems on the motherboard are operating properly. If not, then you are probably looking at a motherboard issue. Assuming you get the 1-3-3-1 beeps, begin by re-installing one memory module and re-boot the system. If it appears to boot normally (splash screen, "no operating system found" message) and you have a second module, shut the system down, swap modules and power back up. If both modules boot the system separately, put them both in and re-boot. Continue to re-install pieces of hardware until the system acts "funny" again. If it does, the last piece installed is the cause of the problem.

[Me2]

I got the laptop checked out. They took out a 2 gig stick of ram which was in there for less than a year. They told me that the motherboard doesn't support 2 gigs of ram however it had worked fine until last week. I still have the original ram in the laptop though which I believe is 512. So how much more ram could I put in? Was the 2 gig fine or should I go with something else? Also there is a green light at the bottom of the screen close to the keyboard it sort of looks like a circle with the letter "z" through it. What does it mean? Since I got it back I have also had Firefox tell me multiple times that a script is unresponsive. Firefox has never had this issue before.

[RealBlackStuff]

R61e (with max. 4GB) is a bit limited, compared to R61 or T61 (with max. 8GB).
See more info on your RAM issues here: http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/R-Series-Thi ... /m-p/95558

[jronald]

Sounds like the 2gig memory is bad. Put it back in and see what happens.
The Circle Z, is the power on light.

Ron

[Me2]

Could it possibly be that the memory slot is bad and not the ram? If there is that possibility then is there any risk to trying out the other memory slot? For example could the ram be "virused"?

[jronald]

Could be the slot, though not likey.
The ram only "stores" when it has power, can not contain a virus once it is removed.

Ron