Hard drive or video card failure?

I have a Lenovo T61p laptop that has stopped working. I was having some trouble recently with it. I would get graphics artifacts occasionally, and I believe these were caused because of overheating. Normally if I turned off my laptop and restarted it these problems would go away. I have been careful to keep my laptop propped up so that the vents wouldn't be blocked and that seemed to help.

Yesterday I used my laptop without any issues and shut it down like I normally do for the night. This evening when I got home from work and powered it on the laptop failed to work. The laptop was getting power both when plugged in and when on battery. The optical drive turns on and I am able to open and close it. However, I do not see the typical Lenovo welcome screen so I can't even get to the BIOS. Also the little light indication hard drive activity no longer blinks when I start the laptop up. So it seems like my laptop is receiving power, but it is no longer booting up.

I haven't really had issues with my hard drive before. The video card has given me some problems in the past. I was wondering if there was a way to determine what was causing this problem before I decide whether or not to buy a new computer or try to get this fixed.

Also I read somewhere that removing the CMOS battery might fix this. Is that true?

Thanks for the help!

Tim

 

Which GPU did you have? I think the X1300 or Crestline graphics were offered.

Have you tried:

Displaying to an external monitor and seeing if you get artifacts? If you don't then your LCD/inverter is defective. If you do then your motherboard/GPU/RAM is defective.

Reseat RAM/HDD

Replace with known good RAM

 

You probably have Quadro FX 570M graphics, which are known of dying due to Nvidia's fault while producing those chips.
You need new motherboard.

 

Yeah I do have the FX 570M graphics card. My laptop is out of warranty now. Do you think Lenovo would still replace it considering it is a known issue?

Thanks,
Tim

 

A little update. I called Lenovo tech support on Thursday evening around 8pm. I explained my problem and I mentioned the posts made by an admin on the Lenovo forums about this issue. On the Lenovo forums, it said that laptops that were only 6 months out of warranty would be fixed for free. Thankfully my warranty expired only last September. So I was still within that six month window. Tech support asked me for my info and said they would ship a box out to me so I could mail in my laptop to get it fixed. I got the box the very next day!

I was very impressed with the support and service I got from Lenovo. It sucks that this problem was so common, but I feel that Lenovo is doing their best to make this right.

Tim

 

Awesome, good for you! Dell and HP were hit with class action suits so they took back defective machines as well.

 

I'm not feeling that Lenovo is doing their best. They should accept ANY machine with this problem, as it's manufacture's fault, not user's one.
My R61 with faulty chip (luckily, still alive) is now 2 years out of warranty... So, if it fail one day, I will be on my own

 

But what about all the noobs who leave their laptops on a bed or carpet? Should the manufacturer fix those for free to? They have to draw the line somewhere.

 

My point is about switching motherboards with Nvidia's faulty chips in ALL affected by this issue machines, even those damaged by "carpet". Who can prove that GPU was damaged due to it's own fault or keeping it on bed?
Nvidia didn't have as much honor as Intel nowdays... Such a shame.

 

I think you are lucky that Lenovo is doing it, none of their laptops are official listed on problematic models on the Nvidia settlement site, though yes they were affected by the same defective chips. Nvidia really needs to pony up to their mistake.

 

That is some impressive service, Tim; I experienced a similar level of service when I had an X61t. I had to send it in multiple times, the box always got there the next day with an overnight label and I had the notebooks back within a week.

The FX570M is an 8600M GT I believe, and every single one of those was affected by the cracking solder issues. I am surprised yours lasted as long as it did.

 

That's correct, it is 8600m GT chip. Dell provides good service with next day shipping boxes with labels attached as well, but only for the business sector (Precision and Latitude lines). With the Inspiron line I'm not sure how that works since I haven't dealt with return of an Inspiron machine. I don't think they have next day support though unless you paid extra for that option for home users. Lenovo treats the Thinkpad line as business use, they had to carry the next day support over from the IBM days.

 

Well I got my laptop back today. They replaced the motherboard and also replaced my palm rest since it had a crack in it. Pretty nice service if you ask me considering my laptop is out of warranty and is almost 3 and a half years old. Not to mention that the turn around was less than a week. My only slight complaint is that they shipped it back to me in a very large box and my laptop wasn't really secured in place. It could have gotten damaged in the shipping but fortunately it didn't. But for a free out of warranty fix, I won't complain too much.

Chaz, yeah I was totally oblivious to this issue. I kind of took a long break from NBR so I wasn't keeping up to date with the problems with the NVIDIA cards. It is good to see familiar faces. I don't think I knew my laptop had a problem until 6 months ago. I normally always kept my laptop propped up and when I was at a desk I would use a notebook cooler. I am pretty sure those two things helped keep this thing running without problems for as long as it did. Hopefully it can continue to run for a few more years.

Tim

 

I don't think any laptop should die because you use it on a bed or carpet. They all have built-in thermal safeguards.

 

Tim, what GPU do you have in your new motherboard? Same faulty FX 570M?

 

When manufacturers serviced the faulty chips, would newer chips ever fix the issue or did they just replace the motherboard and reuse the same faulty chips by reflowing solder joints?

 

Those boards were only manufactured with faulty chips, once they went out of production that was it, unfortunately. So the replacement mainboards out there are all from that production run that included the bad chips (technically actually bad BGA solder on the chips).

 

Not that I had in mind - I've said that wrong way, sorry.
What I mean was - is it still FX570M or diffrent class (new) GPU?

 

ThinkLover, yes I still have the FX570M card. I am just going to have to do my best to keep my laptop from getting too hot. Hopefully I won't have any issues for a couple of years at least and by then I will be needing to get a new computer anyways since this thing will be too slow and outdated.
Tim

 

TPFanControl, RMClock, RivaTuner - I use all 3 and currently top out at ~65 deg C. Best of luck to you though

 

Well it heating up is a main concern, but also it is the rapid cooling and heating up is what causes the the solder joints to crack and disconnect the GPU package. If only there was a way to slowly decrease the temperatures..

 

There is.
Put fan at lowest level just after quitting stress. It will cool down slowly.
I've wrote config to do that, but it's for ThinkFan (Linux).

 

Nvidia released a special batch of these processors with different bump material that is less prone to these type of failures. You just have to test and use to see whether the problem comes back.