T400 arbitrarily powering off

I am out of warranty right now, so sending it in is not an option, but I know there are many experts on this forum, so please share your wisdom!

My Thinkpad T400 sometimes powers itself off. This powering off process only happens within a few seconds of powering on. I have noticed it happening in these two situations:

1. The computer is off. I press the power button to turn it on. Within 3 seconds, it shuts itself back down. But if I keep on trying, it usually turns on for good on about the third try. Once it turns on for good, it won't shut itself down arbitrarily anymore.

2. The computer is off. I press the power button to turn it on. Then I press the blue, rectangular button to enter BIOS settings or show the boot device list. Pressing this blue button causes the computer to shut off. However, on about the third try, the blue button seems fine and behaves normally.

I also noticed that I got a code of 254 one time after these strange powering off episodes. Then I was prompted to enter setup (i.e. BIOS settings). I did, but found nothing unusual, so I rebooted and no longer saw the error anymore. This error code may be related to my problem, but I could not find 0254 in the hardware maintenance manual. I believe I saw an error that said something like "NV7 checksum bad". I didn't write down the exact error (I know I should have), but I googled and I think the NV7 part at least looks correct.

Any ideas what might be happening? Thanks!

 

Sounds like something is going to fail permanently soon. You'd better make sure you have a backup of your documents, pics, etc.

 

There's a few threads over at the Lenovo Community Forums that are similar to your fault and from what I could see, it could be down to a failing CMOS battery and/or faulty RAM DIMMs in the ThinkPad.

An example thread is listed below - have you ran any of the Lenovo bundled utilities on your ThinkPad to see if any errors are detected but also have you ran any RAM testing utilities on it as well?

Blank screen after awaking from sleep. [T400] - Lenovo Community

BTW is the error message 0254 - System NV7 Volume checksum bad- Defaultconfiguration used???

 

I do have a backup, fortunately, but I hope I can determine what the problem is instead of buying a new computer. After all, it does work perfectly once it turns on. I thought maybe a wire was broken or bad somewhere, or maybe something was wrong with the power button.

I took a look at the link "Blank screen after awaking from sleep". My problem is slightly different (my computer doesn't just show a blank screen; it really turns itself completely off and requires the power button to be pressed again to be turned back on). I also never let my computer sleep or hibernate while it's on. But I did run Memtest86+ and it found no errors so far after a few passes, and the CMOS battery was only recently replaced. What else could be wrong?

That error you posted, by the way, seems to be the one that I got, but I've seen that error before my power problems started, so they might not be related. The error seems to happen once every few months.

 

Which BIOS version do you have installed?

 

I have version 3.19 (7UET89WW) installed.

 

Which GPU do u have? ATI switchable?

 

Yep, ATI switchable, but I usually just use the ATI instead of switching around.

 

go into the bios and switch to intel gpu, then see whether the system powers off randomly.

 

Sorry for the long period of silence. I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that I still don't know with certainty what caused the problem.

The good news is that it seems (at least for the moment) to be gone.

I did a few things to try to fix the problem. I opened up my case and reconnected some things that were plugged in (like the keyboard, palm rest, etc) to make sure there weren't any loose connections. I also tried to resecure loose wires with new tape (to replace the old tape that had long lost its stickiness). I did this because I suspected an electrical short of some kind.

I then updated my BIOS to the latest version, after taking a hint from ScottyBoy. I did this even though I used to be able to operate just fine on the older version of the BIOS.

These steps combined greatly reduced the problem. I tried powering on and off many times, and it was normal. I still had the problem when restarting the computer from the operating system though.

The next thing I did was to take a hint from lead_org and mess with the graphics settings. I didn't think I could live with using integrated graphics for the rest of my life (ok, maybe just for the lifetime of this computer ), so instead of switching to Intel gpu, I chose discrete graphics instead.

The system has not powered off randomly for some time now. I think the most likely cause was the BIOS, but I don't know exactly what was wrong. I'm a bit disappointed because being able to switch between integrated and discrete graphics was convenient. The cost of solving the problem is that I have to lock the computer in discrete graphics permanently. Anyone have further suggestions as to what I should try next? I never had this problem before! What might have caused it?

 

Have you checked to make sure you're not overheating?

 

How might I do that? I ran SpeedFan and all the temperatures have green checks. Does that mean the temperatures are normal?

Also the powering off only happens when I reboot or when I'm turning the computer on. If I'm overheating, wouldn't it randomly shut off when I'm doing work too?

 

Looks like I spoke too soon about the problem being fixed. This is still happening, but only about 10% of the time now. For those who are just seeing this thread for the first time, the problem is that within 3 seconds of powering on my T400, the computer shuts itself back down. During normal usage, the computer never powers itself off arbitrarily; this problem only happens when I'm restarting or turning the computer on!

Please help anyone. What could be causing this? The computer works perfectly in every other respect, so this is really frustrating.

 

No problems like this one mine's. I have a hunch that this might be connected to a hardware failure, especially GPU. These can be nasty to find and fix. Have you tried resetting the BIOS back to all defaults? If no luck, then it might be time to look at an upgrade, or find another T400.

 

On those occasions where it dies, does it make it to the Windows loading screen? Have you tried booting into a Linux live CD?

 

I too think it's likely a hardware failure. It may be hard to diagnose...but more than likely it's the mainboard. This would include a plethora of parts which is ruled out by a replacement motherboard. May not be worth the price it cost to repair.