T61 restarts randomly, often

I've had my T61 for about a year and a half. There has never been any major damage except for once when water was spilled into the fan/heatsink assembly. I shut it off, dried it, waited a day, and it worked. That was six months ago. No idea if its related.

A month or so ago, it started acting wierd. If I disconnected the AC and ran it on battery power, it would restart almost immediately. I could log in once it restarted, but then it would only stay on for a while before it restarted again. Just power off, then power back on. I kind of ignored it because I rarely run the thing on battery.

Last week, it restarted twice in a day while I was using it with the power cord. It didn't happen again that week so I figured it was a fluke. Starting yesterday, it started restarting more and more often. It was usually, but not always, under stress from a game or movie I was playing.

I assumed it was a heat issue. I downloaded tpfancontrol and set the fan to run constantly on high, and kept an eye on the temperatures. They didn't seem extreme, never reaching above 70C, and usually keeping around 55 with no stress and 65 with stress. I don't think it's a heat problem anymore though, because I took the case apart to clean for dust, and there wasn't much. I ran the computer with the face and keyboard off, keeping the fan well exposed and it still restarted, even though temps were way down in the 40s across the board. So I'm pretty sure it's not heat.

It's not a software problem either. It restarts in safe mode and even in the BIOS. I'm thinking it's a power supply issue, but what? As of right now I can't get it to run for more than a minute or so after turning it on. While it runs though, everything seems fine. HDD is responding, memory is reporting, both cores seem to be working. I had to work very fast to get my keypass data off of my HDD so I could log on and post this, and it took a few tries. The restarts are now seeming very random.

That leads me to believe that something is deteriorating inside the power delivery system. The problem is getting progressively worse, and the other components seem okay. I have two ideas. The water that got in the case could have very slowly rusted something in the power supply and it is now all but useless. That, or the power supply is just toasted.

Any thoughts? It seems like I'm going to have to pay someone to fix it, and that's kind of a blow to my pride because I've never had to do that before.

 

It does seem like a problem in the power assembly.

One thing you could try is to get another battery into your laptop and see if it works in that case. If it does, it might be your battery short-circuiting the power supply and causing a shutdown, and in that case all you need is a new battery.

Honestly, I think it is a longshot, but it's worth a try if you have access to another T61 battery (from a friend or colleague for example).

 

A good idea, but even with the battery pulled out and just the AC plugged in it restarts.

 

Oh. In that case, call Lenovo, ask if they will repair it. I think it is your only option.

 

I'm very confused now. It's working, but still restarting. It's taking longer to restart, and there seems to be no pattern. I don't get it. I have no clue what's wrong.

 

Did you call Lenovo?

 

What about faulty memory? I would have told you to run memtest86+ on the RAM, but since it is restarting so frequently thats hard to do. Do you have another laptop where you can drop your ram into to test it?

 

It could be faulty memory, mobo, or power supply. Hopefully, it is just the memory.

 

I called Lenovo, and they just said I should run their diagnostics. I can't really do that since the laptop is constantly restarting, but I'm trying. Thanks for all your help.

I finished all of the system board tests and it passed, also my LCD is fine. That takes care of the two most costly repairs, assuming the tests can be trusted. I'm testing both memory sticks in different slots, to see if there's an issue there.

 

Well, the computer passes all of the diagnostic tests except for the parallel port test. Disabled that, problem persists. I can't run the HDD or RAM tests because they take to long and it restarts. That isn't to say that it didn't restart during other tests, because it did. It restarted during the video card test, and some power tests. Then other times they passed. Sometimes I wasn't running any tests, and bam, there she goes.

All I know is that it's a hardware problem for sure. BIOS has been reset to defaults, and it restarts when running from the diagnostic CD and ignores the HDD completely.

Sometimes I can get windows to load and it crashes immediately.

Sometimes it restarts while it's loading windows.

Sometimes it loads windows, gets 70% of the lenovo stress test finished before it restarts. It's completely random.

Help.

 

I think you need a Lenovo tech to fix that properly, sounds like a serious issue.

Call them and tell them it's your work machine and you can't be without it for long. Maybe that way they'll send someone to your house.

 

It could also be overheating issue. Monitor your temps using a program like HWMonitor. If your temps are 95-100+ Celsius, then there is a problem.

 

The OP mentions in the original post that temps don't seem to be a problem after being monitored.

 

Whoops. I overlooked it the second time I read it. Sorry.

 

It's out of warranty, I'll have to ship it off. I'm going to have to do that, because I'm completely at a loss. No rhyme or reason, oh well.