Strange Problem with IBM ThinkPad T40

Hello guys

I have a very strange problem with an IBM ThinkPad T40 I bought recently.

I started the laptop and it the LEDs for the battery, CAPS, Num Lock, etc. lighted and then turned off, remaining only the battery and the power on, which is normal as I know from other ThinkPads. However the IBM logo does not show and the screen does not show any activity. I can hear the CPU fan but the hard drive does not show any activity and the CAPS and Num Lock are not working. The laptop remains like this, no change.

The first time this happened, I turned it off and on again and everything worked again without a problem. The second time was the same. However now it will not turn on at all, always remaining black with no HDD activity.

Any ideas on what to check? Thanks.

 

Do a power discharge first. Remove battery and AC adapter, hold down power button for 10 seconds then release, hold down for another 10 seconds and release again, now plug in AC adapter only and try powering it on again.

If it powers on then your ok untill next time and if it does not power on, you need to replace the planar (system board).

 

It did not help. Do you have an idea what exactly it is? So that I can go back to the place I bought it (used machines) and explain...

 

Its the system board. It could be a number of integrated devices that failed, but the T40/T41's had flexing issues with the board that would cause video and power issues.

 

I have the same problem on power, and it works everytime I followed the direction to discharge the power. However, it's just a temporary solution, and I'm wondering whether there is a way to fix it, not to repeat to discharge power everytime.

Thanks

 

It sounds like a BIOS issue. Its probably hanging because it can't find some piece of listed hardware, as optomos implied. Why it can't find that hardware, I have no idea. But if you can't even get into the BIOS to boot from an external floppy (to update/downgrade the BIOS), then the computer is toast. The only solution at that point for a failed BIOS would be to replace the motherboard.

Of course, I could be wrong.

EDIT: I noticed that your problem doesn't occur every time. Ignore my post, then.

 

It's a mainboard issue. A friend of mine had a T40 Thinkpad and it did the same thing. It would power on sometimes ok then not othertimes and finally wouldn't work again. He was told by IBM it was a bad capacitor on the mainboard, not repairable and needed to be replaced.