T40 - Won't power on, Green Battery light

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My daughter's thinkpad T40 is apparently "bricked" i dont kow what happened to it to put it in this condition. She's 12 , she didnt do anything really out of the ordinary or techincal to it.

Im a pretty capable computer repair person. I have had to replace the fan/heatsink in my own thinkpad (R51) before.

The current condition of the T40:

It wont power on whatsoever. Whent he AC cable is plugged in , the battery light shows green. This is the only response I can get out of it.

I have replaced the battery and tried several different way to get ti to return from a possible "suspend" or "hibernate" mode. No effect.

Its my guess that there's not much really wrong with it. My guess is that its stuck in some sort of suspend mode or its "bit hung" and wont respond. I need a way to reset it.

I have left it with battery disconnected for over 24hrs. Again, no effect.

Im hoping someone here will have some inside dope since I dont have a ton of ThinkPad-specific experience.

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
Try this old and trusted trick:
remove the main battery and AC adapter.
Then press and hold down the power button for 1 second and let go, repeat 10 times, then press once more, but now hold it for 30 seconds.
Connect only the AC adapter and try again to boot the machine.

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/sigh :] thanks for the tip so quickly but no luck.

The battery indicator only comes on when the AC cord is attached. It will charge the battery, eventually changing the indicator from orange to green.

With AC only and no battery, I get no response.

With battery only I get no response either. Battery indicator will only light with AC plugged in.

That's all the clues I got. I actually a pretty competent computer repair tech, btu this one has me stumped with no indicators to go on.

I once had an R51 that the fan/heatsink failed on. It shutdown due to overheat with similar behavior. With that one I finally figured out what had happened to it when I left the machine in my car in the winter and it started working again. I tried putting this T40 in the fridge for a few hours and still no response.

Thanks in advance for any ideas of how to troubleshoot this thing.

[RealBlackStuff]

My daughter is 12, she didn't do anything really out of the ordinary or techincal to it.

You have NO idea what weird and wonderful things a 12-yr-old can do!
Check for liquid spillage after you remove keyboard and palmrest.
Sodas like coke etc. are deadly!

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You have NO idea what weird and wonderful things a 12-yr-old can do!
Check for liquid spillage after you remove keyboard and palmrest.
Sodas like coke etc. are deadly!

Yeah, but no. She didnt spill anything in it. She's not allowed to just run loose with it anyway. Always supervised. She came to use it one day and it wouldn't power up.

[Septfox]

I'm not entirely sure if t40s and t42s share the same keyboard/button combo (Access/volume/power buttons along the top), but if this kind of thing were happening to my t42, I would be checking the keyboard's connector and ribbon cable for damage/defects. Perhaps a little corrosion has formed on the pins that the power button lead to, or the laptop has been jarred enough at some point to partially knock the connector undone. Not really likely (the keyboard itself rests on the connector, at least in the t42), but it doesn't hurt to check.
Could also short the two pins on the motherboard's connector that the power button leads to; bypass the keyboard assembly altogether. No idea which two that would be, though.

The fact that the battery light is on just tells you that the motherboard and charging circuitry are getting power...which is good, but something could be terribly wrong with the planar board and the charging circuitry would probably be working fine :\

Edit: also, do not put a laptop in a cold location (fridge, freezer), then bring it back out into warm air and try to power it up without letting everything dry. Condensation is rather bad for computers, especially laptops where everything is so close together; at best, it probably won't power on at first, at worse condensation will short something vital and you get a dead <insert anything with a circuit board here>.

[poshgeordie]

Sorry to hear of your problems.

Does your daughter (or anyone else) pick the laptop up by the front edge or front corners or by the screen?
This is death to Thinkpads! Have a look at my document on how to handle a Thinkpad.

All laptops should be properly carried as indicated, especially Thinkpads. Carrying / moving by the front edge flexes the motherboard and will cause the Southbridge (SB) chip (located at the front of the motherboard) solder balls, which solder the chip to the motherboard, becoming detatched.

There are many fault symptoms when the balls on an SB become detached but one of them is an apparently dead laptop except for the battery light being on.

You can sometimes confirm this. Remove the keyboard and front palm rest (see my document Screw Locations on how to do this).
Remove the WiFi Card (the card right at the front of the motherboard) - the SB chip is the big Intel chip under the card, and refit the keyboard.
Using the heel of your palm press down as hard as you can on the SB chip and switch on the laptop and see if it works. It often doesn't work, but sometimes it does.

If it is an unsoldered SB, go to The Board Room, a USA-based Thinkpad board exchange service for forum members, and exchange your broken board for a fully refurbished one.

If you cannot demonstrate the SB is the problem, then unfortunately it's possible your board won't be accepted for exchange, but you could ask Dominic who runs it.

Again I would suggest that whilst it's open that you closely inspect the top of the motherboard for liquid spills. I'm not accusing anyone in your family but it's a good chance to give it a good check.

Regarding broken keyboard On/ Off button, it's always possible as well but it's not a common fault (but no unknown either!).
Also any T4x keyboard will fit your board.