R40 Won't power on

[beer]

Looking at a friend's R40. When I hit the pb the lights flash and go off except for the power on and battery lights. He said it sat for a month and worked fine when last used. I tried swapping power supplies, fully charging the battery and powering up without the battery all with the same results. Any help would be much appreciated.

[rkawakami]

It sounds like the system is receiving power (power and battery LEDs remain lit after the R40 is turned on). I'm also assuming that the fan spins up for a few seconds as well. Here's a few things that might be wrong and what you can try to verify the diagnosis:

- The system has disabled the LCD on boot (a BIOS option in most systems; don't know if the R40 has this or not)

• Power up the system, press the F1 key (to access the BIOS), wait for about 10 seconds, then press the Fn+F7 key combination. Assuming that only the external monitor has been set active, this should re-activate the LCD. The reason why I say to access the BIOS is that I don't want the laptop to boot any operating system. The Fn+F7 keypress will cause the system to cycle between the internal (LCD) display and the external display.

- If that doesn't work, the backlight (aka, CCFL) inside the LCD panel burned out or is not receiving power

• Attach an external monitor that is known to work, power up the laptop, press the F1 key, wait for about 10 seconds and then if there's still no image on the external monitor, press the Fn+F7 key combination. If there's an image on the external display, then you have a inoperative backlight.
• A stuck lid switch could cause the laptop to cut power to the inverter, a board the provides the required voltage for the light; check to see if it's pressed down.
• The backlight died; about the only way to determine if this is the problem is to replace the LCD panel with a known good unit. It's fairly hard to remove and replace the fragile lamp, without causing more (new) problems with the display (uneven lighting, dead pixels/rows/columns, dust specks in the display). This is a good candidate for the problem if recently the display has been pinkish when first turned on.
• The inverter died; replace with a known good unit.
• A fuse on the motherboard blew, cutting power to the inverter; requires disassembly of the system and some luck in finding the tiny, tiny fuse.
• Defective LCD cable; probably not the cause but it's possible. Again, replace with a known good unit.

- Some other general power problem on the motherboard

• Remove all hardware: memory, hard drive, MiniPCI card, communication daughter card(s), etc. and try to boot the system
• You should get the 1-3-3-1 beep code (1 short beep, pause, 3 beeps, pause, 3 more beeps, pause and then 1 beep). This indicates that the motherboard is at least functional enough to know that it's missing memory.
• Assuming that you get the 1-3-3-1 beeps, re-install one of the memory modules and re-boot. The system should now boot normally (no error beeps) and if the display becomes active, then one of the things you removed from the system is causing the problem. Re-install one item at a time, booting the system each time to see if it's still working okay.
• If the laptop still does not power up normally with the one memory module, move it to the other slot and boot again. If it still continues to not turn on properly, try a different module. It's possible, but rare, to have a defective memory module not generate the 1-3-3-1 boot beep error code. If you can, try installing the memory module(s) in another system that takes the PC2100/PC2700 DDR modules and see if it/they work there.

ref: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... 3n6183.pdf (Hardware Maintenance Manual for R40/R40e)

[beer]

Ray,

Thanks for your your prompt and thorough reply. I tried unsticking the cover switch and the BIOS thing to no avail.

I should also note that there was no fan or any kind of beeping at power up and I don't think I heard anything from the HD, although it was loud in here.

[rkawakami]

I'd say that most likely you are looking at a dead CCFL, given the age of the system. I'd ask your friend if the display was showing the red/pink tint since that's the main symptom when the backlight starts to go. However, it will only take some of your time to strip out the memory and MiniPCI card and see what that result is. I say those two items because I have seen a bad MiniPCI card hang systems like you describe and it's possible that a bad memory module can act up like that as well. I'd eliminate those two pieces of hardware before considering spending some $$$ on a replacement LCD panel.