re: lenovo t61 graphics/lcd problem diagnose

Dear Community,

I have a Lenovo T61 that I believe the GPU and possibly LCD have failed but I would like a community diagnosis to be sure.

I have provided the following pictures below. They are blurry because of poor lighting, but I think the pictures are good enough to see what's going on.

1. Booting using laptop's LCD screen.


That is all I see- no splash screen, no loading windows gui. Just those flickering lines.


2. Booting using external monitor via VGA




Is the notebook indeed beyond repair?

Thank you all in advance for your help. You shall be repped (within reason).


Sincerely,
Joe

 

It's not beyond repair, but the motherboard will need to be replaced. If it does it on an external monitor, it's almost certain it's a defective GPU. I might suggest getting a board with an Intel card, which are cheaper and have no defective GPU. They're not too hard to swap. I take it the warranty is gone? You could try calling support. Maybe they'll help you, but if they don't you haven't lost any ground. Good Luck.

 

Joe,

Almost anything is fixable!

EDIT (I cross posted with Zaz - he's fast!)

Since you are getting distorted images on both internal LCD and external displays, I would tend to blame the system board. What's the 4 digit model type?

You could try clearing / reseting CMOS on the off chance some bits are garbled. Are you running 2 dimms? Try one and then the other - it's possible if you have a model with integrated graphics that some part of main memory is being used by video as well and if a Dimm were bad that maybe your video could be corrupt. I think these are remote possibilities, but worth excluding because they cost you nothing but time to check out.

Using the external display (because it's almost readable), can you download PC Doctor / Lenovo system toolbox from the web and run the diagnostics, especially the video test?

You may get some answers there..

Best regards,

Mark

 

Dear ZaZ and Mark@Lenovo:

Thank you all for your speedy replies. Thank you ZaZ for fixing my post.

Mark@Lenovo,
The model type is 6459. The graphics card is the Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M, I believe. Since it is not integrated graphics, should I still try the CMOS and DIMM (could you clarify what that procedure is? do I take out 1 stick of memory and try rebooting?)

I have been unable to access Thinkpad Rescue and Recovery. Using the external monitor, I pressed the blue button during startup and then a screen appeared, but it was missing letters and I could not read what it said. Then the laptop restarted by itself.

I have been able to access the Windows Startup Repair (which appears to be a part/extension of Thinkpad RnR) but the repairs were unsuccessful.

Unfortunately, I am out of warranty.

More information:

The situation was previously better, that is, I was once able to log in into Vista and see the desktop and etc, on the laptop's screen. I ran Lenovo system toolbox but the program found no errors with regard to the video card. Then the screen froze and the colors on the screen changed colors.

The problem was initially presented as thus: (I had always used my laptop via external monitor with laptop's display off) One day while surfing the internet the screen froze. I though it was an OS problem, so I restarted. I got the funny display on the external monitor. Using the laptop's display I first got correct display, buy then things start going awry. Soon I saw nothing but those flickering lines during startup on the laptop's display, and the lines on the external monitor.

So is it just the GPU that is at fault? What about the LCD display?

Thank you again for your help.

-Joe

 

It's almost certain it's the GPU as the nVidia cards in the T61 and R61 are known defective. There's probably nothing wrong with the LCD, but do the things Mark mentioned, if only to rule them out.

 

You could test the LCD on another T/R machine although quite unpractical.

Nvidia GPU's tend to fail over time on all T61 equipped with those chips. Quite an annoyance since previous Thinkpads (T4x series) had also a similar problem although fixable through reflowing the loose GPU soldering.

 

So the reflow process does not work here because the problem is a defective core?

 

technically its defective chip packaging that does not resize correctly as the gpu heats up and cools off.

it happened to my stock t61 (the overclocked one is still going strong). Lenovo didnt help (although dell and HP are acknowledging the issue and extending warranties) so I ended up having my credit card company's extended warranty reimburse it.

good luck and try to avoid getting the same GPU

 

It's the desktop cards too. I had a 8600GT card in my desktop. I've sent it in four times to get it fixed at $12 a pop for shipping, which is almost as much as I paid for my card, but it keeps failing. I kept asking MSI to send me something different, but they always fixed it. Finally I went back to my GeForce 6500 cause it at least works.