HELP - Thinkpad t60 LCD problem

[donyouth]

I was using my Thinkpad t60 the other night and everything was fine. Then these appear (see photos enclosed), as soon as I boot the laptop, showing thinkpad screen and bios, memory info blah blah. There are also lots of pink horizontal short lines running from the top of the screen to the bottom, in windows xp mode.

http://s1084.photobucket.com/albums/j404/donyouth/


The laptop is fine otherwise.

Is this a graphics card\chip problem or just the LCD screen or (gulp) both?

Thanks in advance. Please Help.

Oh, Connecting an external monitor show the same problem

[billp117]

In my opinion it is the screen. Just to make sure you can plug in an external monitor and if there are no lines on the monitor...it is the screen for sure.

[donyouth]

Connecting an external monitor shows the same problem. What could it be?

[91011]

Yours looks about the same as a 'for parts' T60 I got this week for the T7600 cpu.

No video to LCD and garbled video similar to yours on an external monitor.
Swapped LCD into another machine and it's fine so I'm going with a bad GPU and replacing the motherboard.

Five minutes ago got one of these boards:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lenov-IBM-T60-Mothe ... 2a0c57af49

For only $29 it's worth a shot. They dropped the price from $49 so I grabbed one, three left.
But they only ship to the US.

[billp117]

WOW...that is a smoking price on the motherboard. Good catch!!!

[donyouth]

Thank you. Tell me, is this a general issue with laptops or unique with Thinkpads? This is my 2nd thinkpad. First one was a T30. Same graphics issue, but that problem was worse. Now I have this T60 and this has gone bad.

[RealBlackStuff]

The T30 was notorious for GPU problems (and bad RAM slot).
T61 with nVidia GPU is a problem child, with GPU dying left, right and center.
That's not Lenovo's fault, but nVidia's, who has a humongous class action going against them, charged by Dell, HP and others.
T60 has no common ailments, on the contrary, they are one of the best ever.
Depending on how you treated the machine (did you lift it regularly on the left or right front corner, with one hand, and while open?), you shouldn't have any issues with them.
I'd sooner blame the humidity of Jamaica!

[wild_bill]

T60 has no common ailments, on the contrary, they are one of the best ever.

well they are definitely one of the best ever, but they certainly do have common ailments:

Common T60 ailments:

1. LG/Philips SXGA+ panel's backlight goes bad early in life resulting in dim/yellow screen.
2. magnesium frame cracks in narrowest part near "~" key. (check yours carefully and be prepared for a little surprise!)
3. palm rests can easily crack in narrow area near space bar.
4. palm rests and keyboard bezels become more ill-fitting the more times your T60 is disassembled for mandatory dust removal.
5. heat issues are common under any type of CPU or GPU heavy app. unless T60 heatpipe area is reworked with better CPU/GPU clamping force, strategic heatpipe bending, replacement of stock thermal compound, and periodic dust removal/fan/heat sink cleaning.

all laptops have some issues, and the T60 is what I use as my main system, I think in the UXGA + Core2Duo form it is the best laptop going at any price, but let's don't pretend it doesn't have a few issues.

[dr_st]

3. palm rests can easily crack in narrow area near space bar.

While it is definitely a weak spot, I have never had the palmrest crack there under normal use. However, twice over the course of 3 years, I had the right corner on a 14" T60 break (once it broke off completely, once it was half-detached). And this was not even from any excessive disassembling. The piece of plastic there is just very small and weak.

5. heat issues are common under any type of CPU or GPU heavy app. unless T60 heatpipe area is reworked with better CPU/GPU clamping force, strategic heatpipe bending, replacement of stock thermal compound, and periodic dust removal/fan/heat sink cleaning.

However, I still haven't seen a single T60 whose heat would cause it to throttle down or to become physically uncomfortable for the user (i.e., hot to touch) under normal working conditions. But I must confess I have not worked with T60ps - these are said to be hotter.

I think in the UXGA + Core2Duo form it is the best laptop going at any price, but let's don't pretend it doesn't have a few issues.

If these are common issues present inherently in one way or another in every laptop (e.g., thin plastic parts which can break esp. if you mess with them a lot disassembling and reassembling), I wouldn't call them issues.

[beeblebrox]

OK,
with reference to my other posting here I can confirm, that the T60 with the hot ATI X1400 has a flexing problem.

It is now the third T60 that suddenly had a blank screen on boot-up or did not want to boot at all.
Today I opened it, checked for bad fuses, found nothing and then pressed on the ATI chip. Yeah... it boots and beeps.

But I could not get beyond the Thinkpad Logo, not into BIOS or anything else. It just froze. I pushed several times again, and now the T60 is dead.

Oh well, the typical ATI flexing problem... not again !!!

[dr_st]

I wouldn't go so far as to claim it to be related or in any way similar to the ATI "flexing" problem (which wasn't even directly caused by flexing) on the T4x.

The T4x issue was documented in hundreds and thousands of cases, complete with cause, symptoms and solutions.

Here you only have one case, and even that is moot. It may be that GPU detachment was the cause, since pressing on it changed something, then again it might be a coincidence, since you couldn't get it to work anyway.

GPU can go bad, just like other components. Until one sees enough reported cases with similar characteristics, and proven solutions (like reflow/reball), it would be to early to conclude it as a "typical ATI flexing problem".

My opinion at least.

[wild_bill]

I'm gonna have to go with beeblebrox on this one, based on recent record, he solved the LG Philips dim/yellow mystery, and no one else here figured that one out in the four years that it was a huge problem, so he is the master guru of the month!

@mods - the LG/Philips SXGA+ monitor backlight solution needs to become a sticky!

[westsailor]

I think I'm having the same problem. Boots to a screen that looks like the image is smeared top to bottom with some black gaps. But I can put it into sleep and/or reboot after a few minutes (like something needs to warm up) and I can get it to work.

Otherwise everything seems to work fine. PC Doctor doesn't find anything wrong with anything.

I have a new UXGA Flexview in transit to fix a stuck gate (1 pixel horiz black line) and few bright spots that's developing on the LCD. But I don't think that's gonna fix the 'smear' problem.

[wild_bill]

I think I'm having the same problem. Boots to a screen that looks like the image is smeared top to bottom with some black gaps. But I can put it into sleep and/or reboot after a few minutes (like something needs to warm up) and I can get it to work.

if your screen looks like the pics the OP posted hosted on photobucket, then you definitely have a GPU (motherboard) problem

[westsailor]

Actually, no. My LCD doesn't look like those in his pix at all. I wouldn't be able to show any pix because it's too dim.

Mine looks as if the screen is completely smeared from top to bottom resulting in a very dim, vertical bands of color.

For example, when I first boot up, the Thinkpad logo causes a very dim "white' smear from top to bottom, to the left. Then when the ... whatchacallit... the colored bars that scroll across the bottom as WinXP is booting up creates a dim colored smear in the middle. Finally, I see a dim blue smear when it boots the the admin/password screen. Finally I get a desktop smear.

Nothing is recognizable. I only know what the above screens are by being so familiar with the boot process, what the T60 is doing/going thru.

the weird thing is, when this started (about a month+ ago) it might take me 4,5 times of putting it into sleep or rebooting to get to a normal screen. I've been waiting for it to go [censored] up anytime. Then it seemed like if I turned it on, waited a bit, I could get it to work right like something was needing to warm up. Then in just the past few days it started booting right up or maybe taking only 1 time in sleep right away. Like it was fixing itself.

Until this afternoon. It took me almost forever to get it back right and in the process the screen would be fine, kinda flickering, touchpoint all jerky, then slowly dim away into the smear. I thought for sure it was finally dead. But I kept at it and I'm using it now and it looks perfect. Now I'm afraid to turn it off

A real head scratcher but I'm thinking motherboard/GPU.

[wild_bill]

it pretty much has to be either motherboard/GPU, or RAM, or the digital board on back of the panel, or one of the cable connections such as the GPU to panel cable

doesn't sound like: inverter, inverter cable, back light, backlight cable, virus, the glass part of the panel, CPU, or other components

sorry to be so general, but we really need a pic of this "smearing" to diagnose over the Internet more accurately

[westsailor]

I'm wondering if I should maybe re-seat the relevant connectors. I live on a boat and while I take as good care of it as I can the environment is nonetheless pretty harsh. Especially this time of year (it's the rainy season).

Couldn't hurt... It could stand a decent 'spring cleaning' while I'm at it anyway.

[wild_bill]

pay particular attention to the end of the video cable that connects on the upper back of the LCD, unlike the other end, it is only held on by some 5 year old tape, unlike the GPU end of the cable that is connected with two screws!

hey what do you know about Roatan? I am thinking of moving there!

[westsailor]

hey what do you know about Roatan? I am thinking of moving there!

Seriously? Check yer PM

[westsailor]

The last few days, in addition to booting to a 'smeared' screen (see above) my display has begun 'flickering', then slowly dimming to black. This is starting to occur even if I have my display working properly. Interesting symptom is that when the otherwise normal display starts to flicker/dim the mouse is frozen. This made me think it might very well be the GPU.

Yesterday I thought it finally died. I couldn't get the display to clear up putting it into sleep/re-booting for 30-45 minutes. I must have rebooted 25 times.

Long story short, I was finally able to get access to an external flat panel monitor. Guess what, the external monitor works perfectly (while the laptop screen is otherwise 'dead'). One thing I noticed was (comparatively speaking) the flexview seemed to have a yellowish tint compared to the Dell (although the Flexview still had a much 'chrisper' picture/resolution)

So... good thing I have a UXGA LCD on the way.

So I borrowed the monitor to get some things done overnight. I get everything back to my boat and dang if the laptop boots up just fine. OK, just a fluke but it booted up just fine this morning as well.

WTF?!?!

Anyway, obviously I will replace the LCD but I just hate troubleshooting the kind of problems that are random and/or you cannot consistently duplicate.

[wild_bill]

when the otherwise normal display starts to flicker/dim the mouse is frozen.

99% of the time, in my experience, mouse freezing is a tell-tale sign of overheating of either the CPU or GPU or both.

when is the last time you cleaned the heatpipe/fan/heatsink area of dust?

I use a brand new paintbrush & a vacuum cleaner

also - have you replaced the poor quality stock thermal compound on the CPU & GPU with Arctic Silver 5?

[westsailor]

when is the last time you cleaned the heatpipe/fan/heatsink area of dust?

Uh.. never?

Guess I should take a peek under the hood and see what kind of critters have nested in there huh.

[wild_bill]

How to correct the (very) common problem of T60 overheating:

1. remove heatpipe assembly using instructions in the IBM hardware maintenance manual or else the videos at lenovo's service training.

2. remove and discard old white thermal paste and GPU thermal pad, alcohol is good for removing old thermal compound.

3. clean fan, heatpipe and heatsinks with vacuum cleaner and new unused paintbrush (hold fan blade with finger and do not let the fan spin at high speed to prevent fan damage)

4. fashion a piece of copper stock to mimic the size and thickness of the thermal pad (if suitable copper stock is not available you can use a couple of US dime coins sanded perfectly flat (a dime is 92% copper, unlike a penny which is only 2.5% copper) . Some folks I have taught this method to, have even started with a U.S. quarter coin (also 92%).

5. once you have fashioned your copper shim, you will probably (optionally) want to CAREFULLY strategically bend the heatpipe to cause even more force against the CPU/GPU - experiment with the dry fit of the finished heatpipe and copper shim to get everything very nicely and tightly fitting. Go slow and watch what you are doing with these delicate parts.

6.after everything is fitting nice, apply a very thin coat of Arctic Silver 5 to CPU, GPU, contact points of CPU & GPU on heatpipe, and both sides of copper shim or lapped dimes.

7. reassemble and enjoy a cool and completely silent Thinkpad T60