T400 Occasionaly Loads Into a Blank Screen

I've got a major problem with my Thinkpad.
First off this does not happen all the time . Its just random.

Sometimes when I restart the computer, it will load into just a blank screen. Nothing, not even a blinking cursor and it will stay that way . It appears to be frozen. I have to press the power button (which turns my computer off) and then start it up again , it will load into windows fine.

I have no idea what could be causing this. My bios is up to date with a fresh install of windows 7. Its plugged via AC Power. This happened when I had Vista installed as well, and I was hoping to get rid of this problem with a fresh windows 7, but no luck. It just happened recently again.

Having to do hard shut downs can't be good for the computer but when I restart after one of these occurances, windows doesn't give me any error messages. It boots into the OS in about 2 minutes.

Any one give some advice please?

System is T400, windows 7 home premium, ati graphics card, 3 GB ram, P8400 intel CPU.

 

just wondering, but do you have all drivers installed

it sounds, to me, like a software problem

 

When you say it loads into a blank screen, do you mean before or after the BIOS screen appears? If it is after, is it before or after the Windows boot screen (the black one)?

 

cassiohui:I believe my drivers are all up to date. I can't think of any I'm missing. After clean install I installed the latest drivers off Lenovo and things seem to be working fine except for this one problem. How would I check if this is a driver issue?

MidnightSun: it happens before the BIOS screen appears. When it happend the other day..after my hard restart, I pressed F1 to get into BIOS. (this was the first time getting into bios since I updated to the latest firmware). It only gave me two options: Start into windows7 normally or perform memory diagnostic. (what happend to my BIOS settings ). I thought Id do a memory diagnostic and after it found no problems.

I've been trying to videotape everytime I restart to see if I can capture this problem. Unfortunately its random and not after I use a certain program. I do have a Hauppauge tv stick attached to my laptop but I don't think this would be the problem.

 

do you have system update installed? if no, install, if yes, then see what else you're missing...i have a slight suspicion it's something to do with power management.

 

ahh, I didn't have that. I just installed System Update 4 and it recommended these updates.



I installed them all. Now I hope it fixed the issue. But the funny thing is I had system update on the vista OS and i kept it up to date but still ran into the hanging problem.
I do have an external monitor attached via VGA and my power manager seems running fine. Why do you have suspicion its the power management?

 

well, the more i think about it the more i think it might not be software (sorry...........) because if the reboot doesn't bring you to the POST screen, then maybe it's something more complicated

i dunno....i'm just guessing anyway...

 

no problem. if it wasn't so random I can try and diagnose the problem better.

 

Were you able to find a solution to this problem?

 

I have experienced this issue with my T61 about three times so far. It seems to happen more when I power it off completely (not waking from sleep, etc.).
The times that it did happen, the "thinkpad" screen would come on, then would just stay blank with the mouse cursor in the background. I let it stay that way for 5+ minutes, and when nothing comes up on the screen, I just restart it, and she usually boots right back up.
Very strange problem.

 

I agree this is stange...

 

I have had this behavior happen with my T400, but I eventually figured out that it was caused by my external usb hard drive. When my T400 is docked, it is always connected to the external HD, but I have it powered off (usually) and not immediately visible. Whenever I forget the external HD is ON, and then later dock the laptop and turn it on, I will get it booting to a blank screen with nothing happening. It took me a little while to figure out the first time, and I have no idea if your problem might be similar, but that was the cause of mine.

 

Interesting. It's by no means a cause of concern for me though, since 99% of the time, I put my T61 to "sleep" instead of powering it all the way down. When it turns back on from sleep, she's up and running in 2 seconds or less most of the time. Plus, since a few months back after I got rid of a bunch of files I no longer needed, and programs in programs and utilities, she seems to be powering up much faster upon cold start.
So, maybe I just had too much crap on my system lol

 

I've experienced the exact same thing. Sometimes I forget that my external is on and when I turn on the computer it will just sit there for a while. I haven't tried this consistently enough to make it a rule but a couple of times I have let it sit for a while and it eventually booted.