Help! T42 seems dead :(

[cacophony]

I have a T42 that's given me many years of reliable service. About 1 month ago I upgraded the harddrive to the recommended Samsung 160GB and everything has been running smoothly for the last month ... until now!

When I try to boot, here's what happens:

Various status lights illuminate briefly
Fan turns on (and stays on)
Battery icon and the one to the left of it stay illuminated
...
and it just stays like this as long as I'm willing to leave it.
Absolutely nothing displays on the screen at any point (not even BIOS stuff).
If I leave it in this state for 10 minutes and then try various keyboard shortcuts (eg. turning on light above display or pressing Thinkpad button) nothing happens (the light doesn't turn on; I don't hear the song that plays when you press Thinkpad). This makes me think that it's not just a display/graphics issue, but I don't know exactly what this behavior should be in this case. Normally after boot I need to select my user account in Windows XP and enter my password, and I don't know if the Thinkpad button and keyboard light control are setup to only function after login can occur (which obviously I'm not doing right now). Also, if I recall the fan didn't used it be on all the time before (it would turn off after boot).

I tried booting from the recovery CD but it doesn't work. The CD drive spins up but I get the same blank screen and constant fan.

Any help or troubleshooting ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Unfortunately the warranty just expired about 30 days ago. Perhaps Lenovo will be flexible with the end date?

[GomJabbar]

I can't say what's wrong for sure. Try plugging in an external monitor to the VGA port, then turn the laptop on. Do you see anything on the external monitor? If you do, then your problem may be the backlight in the display (or the inverter that powers it).

[cacophony]

I can't say what's wrong for sure. Try plugging in an external monitor to the VGA port, then turn the laptop on. Do you see anything on the external monitor? If you do, then your problem may be the backlight in the display (or the inverter that powers it).

Good idea, I just tried this. I've never used an external display on my T42 before, but here's what I did:

Hooked VGA cable to port near CD drive
Hooked other end of cable to VGA input of my desktop monitor
Turned on T42 and then made sure the external monitor was using the Analog input
...

Nothing appeared on the external display (other than messages saying it had no input)

[RealBlackStuff]

You have (most likely) a loose GPU or a loose Southbridge.
Check the links in my signature for more info.

[poshgeordie]

Agree with RBS - it may be possible to narrow it down:

If you press the I/O button and it takes a few seconds to turn off then it's almost certainly the GPU.

If........................................it switches off immediately it could be either chip.

[cacophony]

Well that's too bad...

Can somebody confirm that the following will work as an enclosure for the internal drive I have (SAMSUNG HM160HC):

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4 ... ernal.html

???

[poshgeordie]

I guess you'd want to use the motherboard as a kind of NAS storage which is accessed via the Ethernet

Not sure about that either since if the Southbridge is down, then maybe the USB ports might not be working, but if it's the GPU you could.

Maybe what you could do is to see if you can access the existing HDD via your network and if that works then to go ahead with a bigger drive.
I'm no expert on this so could be talking hogwash!!

[RealBlackStuff]

That enclosure is fine for your 2.5" PATA hard disk.
Looks a bit on the heavy side (from the specs: 2 Lbs!)
You could get them cheaper (but less elegant) on eBay, if all you need is just a cheap enclosure: http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=usb+en ... p=15&_sc=1

[cacophony]

Well I don't think it was the GPU or southbridge!!!

I removed the RAM in the second slot and now it boots and runs fine!

How could a faulty RAM stick have caused this?

[rkawakami]

About the only thing I can think of is that the problem on the memory module isn't bad enough to fail the (simple) memory test that the BIOS runs. In other words, the memory is "good enough" to not issue the 1-3-3-1 beep code but "bad enough" to prevent the system from fully booting. If that one module, solo in both slots, causes the system to hang, then toss it.