Frustrating T41 Problems

My brother (who is legally blind) has a T41 he received through his university that he uses for his classwork.

It is currently having two frustrating problems:

1) The system status indicators just below the LCD no longer light up for no apparent reason (there is also no longer a beep when the AC adapter is plugged in, which went along with the appropriate indicator lighting up).
2) When the laptop is closed, the system appears to go into hibernate mode (from an OS standpoint, the wireless networking is disconnected, etc.), but the fan can still be heard and the laptop gets quite hot over time. When he goes to use it again after a few hours, the battery is completely drained.

Both of these problems are recent developments. He has had this laptop for several years without any similar problems. Both problems appeared shortly after he received a new battery, which I put in for him (the older one would no longer last as it used to) and at the same time a fresh install of XP and a BIOS update were completed. I don't remember the exact timing, but I am fairly certain these issues appeared some time after the BIOS update. I have tried everything I can think of, including rolling back to an older BIOS, but it doesn't seem to help. I consulted the hardware maintenance manual to see if maybe at the very least the status indicators were replaceable and possibly malfunctioning, but there was only a couple of references to them that merely indicated their location and nothing else.

The battery being drained leads me to believe the hard drive continues to spin even when the laptop is closed, but I can find no reason this should occur.

The system is a few months out of warranty unfortunately, and as he is on a fixed government income, can not really afford to have the laptop serviced at a cost.

This doesn't appear to have anything to do with power settings in the OS, as several formats and reinstalls have taken place to no effect.

Any and all ideas and assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

The status light indicators on Thinkpads... hmm... my first advice would be to go into setup (instead of starting windows) and check carefully to see if the wireless is disabled from the BIOS--it's usually just a toggle on/off... since you updated the bios, it may have gone to a factory default of off... and sometimes, once they are turned off, they are stubborn to come back on--we were installing a new OS (being careful not to allow anything to connect until everything was wiped off) on a T42 and had a similar problem... I both went into the BIOS to check and... silly as it sounds, I hit all the function keys related to things like wireless, etc. since the lights would similarly not turn on and it was being very peculiar until I somehow, after many tries, did get it to turn everything back on.

If it is the hard drive for whatever reason, I know you can get the hitachi travelstar drives for thinkpads for a very inexpensive amount--I saw one on the buy sell trade forum here... any way you could do a swap out of the hard drive with another that isn't being used and see if that resolves it? If it does, that is an easy enough repair-the drives slide out pretty easily.

If you did a fresh install of XP, the hard drive will take a long time (at least in my experience) to load everything and start up in normal amounts of time the first few times, regardless of the machine. You should be able to feel a bit of heat (though not much with Thinkpads) if the hard drive is not stopping and the unit is closed, but that doesn't make much sense to me, either.

Hmm, one other thing... thinkpads get really itchy regarding their graphics drivers... which you may have removed in the clean installs... especially the ATI Mobility Radeon ones... so see if updating that will make it behave. I've had 2 different models both kink up until the graphics card was happy. No idea why the graphics card was impacting the rest of the machine, but that was a problem in thinkpads I had (mind you, they mostly got upset with the latest greatest ATI software--the lenovo drivers are very very machine specific, so the all in one fixes for a given part won't necessarily agree with lenovo's BIOS... their website is a little tricky to navigate, or was when I was using T41-2-3s and had to update them.

 

Thanks for the ideas.

I went through the BIOS and couldn't seem to locate anything that might help with either problem unfortunately. I don't have a laptop drive I could swap in either, which would at the very least eliminate the possibility of a drive problem. I am leaning toward the idea that it isn't, and has more to do with how the system is going into suspend. The drive functions fine during normal use it seems.

I seem to have resolved the beeping noise when the AC adapter is plugged into the laptop by fiddling with various BIOS versions, but the system status indicators will still not light up. I should mention that the wireless LED has never had this problem, and sits about an inch away from the other six. It's pretty confusing.

To better describe the heat, it might be what you would expect to find after leaving the laptop running 3dmark (or something) for an extended period of time. Quite hot.

 

All of the drivers, including the display driver are the latest versions downloaded from the IBM/Lenovo website.

 

The only other thing that I'm coming up with is to carefully take the screws out of the bottom and check the connections... it's possible something just got jiggled out of place when the new battery got put in/when someone was updating this and that and moving it around a lot. Does he happen to have a docking station with his?

What happens when you actually put it in standby/sleep before closing the lid? Does it still get hotter and hotter? As a workaround, he might have to do something like that, even though that's really inconvenient.

Does his college, since that's who gave him the laptop, have some IT/tech support/computer lab people he could go to, or is it an online-only university? The school would theoretically help him if he asked, and usually tossing things like "reasonable accommodation for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance" gets things done in the states... didn't catch where he is, though--US? Canada? Sorry I can't help more--really strange and hard to do "remote support" on hardware issues. I'd take it apart and put it back together carefully and make sure you clean everything out with an aircan as you go and push all the parts in after taking them out, again, just in case some kind of sensor or wire got disconnected. Hopefully it's nothing on a motherboard chip going bad.

 

Hey, I just thought of something else because I was reading a thread...

The lights going out on just one side, not the other...

if your brother accidentally closed the lcd too hastily OR extended it past the 90 or however many degrees is "safe" (even just by 1 or 2), there's a ribbon from the motherboard to the lights that usually has however many wires in it that there are lights... that may have gotten jiggled loose, so if you want to fix it, you take apart the machine (here's one guide for a toshiba: http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/toshiba-satellite-l25/replace-lcd-screen-1.htm then there's a second page for it, too) ... and you need to find, clean up (like with an air can, to make sure any dust doesn't get connected back), and probably secure with electrical tape (since it's obviously gonna be more prone to coming loose now that it's happened once) ...

and if it's only going into hibernate mode, if indeed he did accidentally open it too wide, had it in his lap and it bent a bit, or didn't use a lot of caution in closing it one time, then he could easily have made the connectors that say "go to sleep now" get loose like I was trying to mention but may not have before...

Try that... and this member http://forum.notebookreview.com/member.php?u=90397 has made some awesome posts about mechanical repair--he might especially be willing to help you since your brother is disabled and can't afford a pro repair !!

Good luck, and of course, let me know if it works!

Laura

 

Thanks for responding, unfortunately it seems like he is on his own in terms of getting it repaired.

I don't know the specifics, but I imagine the laptop was paid for by a grant of some kind, and there isn't anyone at his university whose job it is to repair it that I know of. We live in British Columbia, Canada. He's had it for a few years, and I think he is sort of on his own now that the warranty has expired. He could probably apply for another grant to replace the laptop, the only problem being that this might take away money from him that he might use for some other equipment to help him, so repair would be ideal.

I'm going to take it apart and see if I can't locate a loose component that needs to be secured. He has in the past (although not recently) folded the screen all the way back so that he could put the monitor right up close to his face to watch video, so your thinking on a connector for the LED's being disconnected is quite possibly valid. Maybe all it took was a recent knock or bump to loosen it completely. As for the heat issue and the battery drain, I'm still stumped.

Thanks again for all the ideas.