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T61 won't start

post #1 of 9
11/25/12 at 2:06pm
Thread Starter 
T61-7659 CTO with Intel Graphics.

A few days ago, it suddenly died. No lights, nothing. Removed battery, pressed power-on button 10 times, held for 30s, reconnected power supply. Started! Then, died after two days in the middle of a browsing session. Tried same again, started! Died next day, hasn't started since. Left it for a week. Then tried again.

Doesn't start but now the AC power light is green.

Checked RAM, tried each chip in each slot to see if it powers on. No luck.

The, replaced the RAM with another 2GB chip that is known good in each slot and then tested. No luck.

When I start there is a sort of clicking sound with the lights going on momentarily, then nothing. No beeping.

Motherboard dead? conclusive?
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post #2 of 9
11/26/12 at 2:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by v79k View Post

T61-7659 CTO with Intel Graphics.
A few days ago, it suddenly died. No lights, nothing. Removed battery, pressed power-on button 10 times, held for 30s, reconnected power supply. Started! Then, died after two days in the middle of a browsing session. Tried same again, started! Died next day, hasn't started since. Left it for a week. Then tried again.
Doesn't start but now the AC power light is green.
Checked RAM, tried each chip in each slot to see if it powers on. No luck.
The, replaced the RAM with another 2GB chip that is known good in each slot and then tested. No luck.
When I start there is a sort of clicking sound with the lights going on momentarily, then nothing. No beeping.
Motherboard dead? conclusive?

How about trying with another hard drive first?

cheers ...
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post #3 of 9
11/27/12 at 9:39am
Thread Starter 
I removed the Hitachi HDD from the T61 and the start clicking went away. Created a bootable USB(Cruzer) with a small linux distro called damn small linux(dsl) and booted in another laptop. It booted. dsl will run entirely in the RAM. Tried the bootable USB in the T61. It didn't start. The lights come on and the USB momentarily glows but nothing beyond that.

This should eliminate the hdd as the culprit.
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post #4 of 9
11/27/12 at 10:00am
Good. How about trying with an USB optical drive and an installation disk?

cheers ...
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post #5 of 9
11/28/12 at 2:43pm
Thread Starter 
I don't have a USB optical drive, only an inbuilt one in the laptop.
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post #6 of 9
11/28/12 at 2:45pm
Cool. Try an installation CD/DVD in there and see. Make sure that the system starts with Optical Drive first in BIOS

cheers ...
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post #7 of 9
11/28/12 at 3:08pm
Thread Starter 
I had to open the DVD drive with a paper clip hitting the tiny reset hole. It wouldn't open otherwise with the main button. The laptop won't start. So I can't get to the BIOS to change the boot order. The DVD should be first on the boot order.
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post #8 of 9
11/28/12 at 3:30pm
Thread Starter 
I was following the steps on lenovo's site and one of the first things recommended is to connect to AC outlet directly which i did. Surprisingly, the power light does not glow when connected directly to the AC power but the laptop does seem to get power when connecting thru a surge protector. I don't know what to make of this
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post #9 of 9
11/29/12 at 2:10am
Sounded like the motherboard is failing, since you can't even get some sign on the screen sad.gif Try removing the CPU, leaving it out and see if it makes some sort of noise

cheers ...
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