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IBM Thinkpad -- Sudden Laptop Death Syndrome?
Bronz asks: "In one day I went from pondering selling my IBM Thinkpad T20 on eBay to mourning it's inevitable death, and I don't think I'm alone (nor is the T20 is the only fatality). The symptoms are illusive but a pattern may be emerging -- be wary of putting your Thinkpad into a hibernate/sleep state and leaving it connected to AC power. A cursory web search has revealed a smattering of threads detailing the illness. First it won't come out of hibernation and then it simply won't boot at all. One interesting facet of the first thread is that the frequency of posts has been steadily increasing over the past few months and doesn't seem limited to any one particular model." Has anyone else run into this problem with their Thinkpad laptop?
"On a sad note, I feel I only recently exposed the machine to the problem by enabling ACPI in Fedora Core 3 (acpi=force and tinkering with the lid/sleep button events) right before I left for the Thanksgiving holiday. I closed the lid and probably sealed it's fate; first thinking it just wasn't waking up from sleep, a subsequent reboot hung but eventually started, a third boot took slightly longer to sit 'cold' before starting and the forth boot -- well, I'll tell you when/if it ever happens ... It's going on 5 hours as I type this.
Using Slashdot as a channel for tech support has never garnered many friends, but I've always thought of Thinkpads as Linux-friendly laptops and certainly a large number of Thinkpads have found their way under many Slashdot readers 'support umbrella.' Have I randomly stumbled onto a growing, serious problem -- or am I merely an unfortunate statistic at the wrong end of the bell curve? Sometimes it is difficult to determine the difference as there could be a silent majority of people who individually just thought they were unlucky."
Using Slashdot as a channel for tech support has never garnered many friends, but I've always thought of Thinkpads as Linux-friendly laptops and certainly a large number of Thinkpads have found their way under many Slashdot readers 'support umbrella.' Have I randomly stumbled onto a growing, serious problem -- or am I merely an unfortunate statistic at the wrong end of the bell curve? Sometimes it is difficult to determine the difference as there could be a silent majority of people who individually just thought they were unlucky."
Is it possible that the power controller is locked up in some weird way? Try taking the battery out and leaving it unplugged for a day or two, and see if that clears anything up. I _think_ these systems no longer have a separate battery for their CMOS RAM, because, well, CMOS RAM is obsolete - so you shouldn't need to go hunting for that. But based on what you're saying this sounds at first blush like a chip in a bad state, not a chip that's fried.
My laptop (HP tc1100) has the same behaviour but I assumed it was a software problem (Windows XP, you know). I assumed that because it doesn't recover after hibernation but a normal boot (ignoring the hibernation 'file', or how do you call that?) goes fine. So, can this be a hardware thing?
History matters..
Delightful as the concept of illusive symptoms are, being pedantic I reckon they're probably elusive.
My mom's old Sony VAIO laptop did this a couple of years ago. I don't remember the exact details, but the power controller is very broken in it. It can't boot to anything, although the other components appear to be usable. It was about 4 years old when it broke, though.
With my thinkpad T30, if I run /sbin/poweroff whilst xorg-x11 is still running, next time I power it on I'll get a load of beeps (indicating "system board failure") when I turn it on again. Power cycling a few times makes it better again. This only started to happen with recent 2.6 kernels. If I quit xorg and then run poweroff then the problem doesn't occur.
well i'm going to have the mainboard replaced under warranty now. i need a new one anyway (loses power when i pull the power plug out, but runs fine on batteries).
hopefully the problem is in the mainboard. occaisionally I have a very difficult time getting the computer to come out of standby, but I rarely (never?) put it into standby when it is plugged in. (and why do the windows xp default power settings always put the laptop into standby when it is plugged in? why would anyone want that???)
I've been having similar problems with an old Toshiba 440 Satellite Pro running Windows 98.
ACPI sucks badly, and I don't know of any operating systems that can handle it without problems. Maybe some of the more advanced versions of Windows?
I had a T20 at home, and use a T23 at work. The T20 got hosed about three or four months ago, and I had thought that maybe my wife or I had accidentally contracted something that killed it. At around the same time, the T23's HD made a cool grinding noise like a coffee grinder, then the system completely died. (The same thing happened to a couple of other people in the office too, one with another T23, one with a T40.)
The work machine's hard drive was replaced, so that one's back up & running fine. I replaced the machine at home with an iBook 14" and haven't looked back.
I have a similiar issue with my older Thinkpad (forget which model, old 233 cpu). Sometimes it just wont come back after hibernation or even a shutdown at times. Since I don't use it often I just plug it in and wait. Typically next day it boots fine. Never really researched the issue much to figure the cause. Prolly not worth the trouble to me anymore.
But maybe other people on here might have an idea.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I left it in hibernation connected to the wall for the best part of 2 weeks, waking it up when required.
I saw absolutely no problem whatosever.
I am running Mandrake 10.1 in case that makes any difference....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In conjunction with the main Lith-Ion battery going out, actually.
...poof, it turns off.
:)
I ended up replacing the motherboard, myself - thanks for publishing a full in-field guide on replacing *everything* on your laptops, IBM! Bought a used mobo off've eBay for $150. Haven't had a problem since then.
But, yeah, it wouldn't come out of hibernate, sometimes wouldn't boot - I could try a half dozen or 20, 30 times and suddenly it would. Then a random amount of time later
Motherboard replacement - my first, I don't normally deal with laptops - wasn't too hard. It works fine now and I still love my T20.
IBM writes their own BIOS and Controller code on many models, and typically leaves the beta testing to the customer.
I was at one place where a bug in the Supervisor Card (allows for lights out management) firmware trigged the "IBM Reboot Service" to reboot about 1,200 servers at random.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
the forth boot
There's your problem - the Thinkpad was never meant to be booted with Forth. Some bios software is written in Forth, but not the thinkpad.
-Adam
I'm using an IBM ThinkPad R50 with Pentium-M processor. I have similar problems with it. Some times it won't come back from hibernation or suspend at all, sometimes it wakes up after a very long pause (over 5 minutes) and sometimes the machine just throws a blue screen of death instead of waking up.
My personal opinion about this specific R50: I hate it. It's the worst laptop I've ever used. I can't understand how it has gathered so much positive reviews.
Is this issue limited to Thinkpads or does it affect other brands as well? I use sleep-mode constantly and have a VPR Matrix laptop. There are times when it wakes up immediately but, more often than not, it can take a couple of minutes. I've not had much luck using sleep with desktops. It puts the machine to sleep but the fans continue to run -- even after the chips have cooled down.
Anyone have insight into this?
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
I have a somewhat similar problem with my T42. Except mine won't go INTO standby or hibernation every 2nd time. Pattern is this:
1) Boot up
2) do work
3) close lid (=> go to standby)
4) [/me Sleep]
5) Open lid
6) do work
7) close lid. It will now say "preparing to stand by", but it will never happen.
8) Hold power button for 5 secs to do a hard shutdown.
9) Goto 1 (what, goto's are harmful?, bah humbug)
I've been blaming XP SP2 for a while but maybe that is NOT the case...
/Claus
My R40 recently "sorta" died. One morning when I tried to power it out of hibernation state, it would just turn on the "power" light and the "battery charging" light but nothing else happened. The LCD never came on and I didn't hear the HD (although I did hear the CD spin up). I called IBM tech support and they had me try to power on with just the battery and then with just the power cord(and no battery at all). They also had me try an external monitor. The next step was to leave the battery in overnight and leave the laptop powered on to completely discharge the battery. This still didn't work, so I was advised to take it to a local service center.
When I got to the service center, I hit the power button and it came on with no problems. The only explanation that I could come up with is that the laptop was cold since I had it in my car for about 30 minutes and it was 20 degrees F outside. I had read of a similar problem someone had with a T20 and they said that by putting it in the fridge, it helped one of the internal capacitors discharge and that enabled the boot up.
I don't know if this is true or not, but it is the only thing I could come up with. This happened about two weeks ago, and so far has not reoccured.
I had a similar problem on a Toshiba Tecra S1 that I was installing SuSE Linux Desktop 1.0 (kernel 2.4 / SuSE 8.1 base) for a friend.
... I knew I would have to wait through the various standard procedures before I got accelerated. Got accelerated and still no real help. While on hold I removed the battery and let it sit without power for a minute, then put the battery in and it rebooted.
I installed it, it worked fine, I rebooted, it refused to get past the initial BIOS screen. No warnings, nothing. Needless to say my friend who was using Windows with no problem on this machine was a little concerned and I was feeling -stupid-.
After a few tries I called their tech support
Powered down again and wham, same problem.
Some bug in the SuSE patched 2.4 kernel (red hat and other kernels from the same generation worked fine), I am assuming an ACPI patch, were the problem but the real problem was apparently something in the S1 BIOS. A couple months later a new BIOS fixed the problem as reported on a few forums but my friend didn't want to bother again (note: this wasn't an install linux crusade from me, he was just curious).
Fact of the matter is ACPI is still one of the least well standardized parts of the modern laptop, both from a BIOS as well as from an OS perpsective.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
While I haven't tried it myself, I just heard something like that today. It was a cell phone that was acting up, apparently it was the battery. So the girl who owns it was told to put the battery in the freezer for an hour or so. She haven't had any troubles since.
VPS-like shared hosting, on under-crowded servers.
I have an old Sager NP-9820 that has somewhat similar behavior. If I leave the battery in and the machine plugged in for extended periods of time, the machine will power up but not boot. Removing the battery AND the power cord solves the symptom. It has always done this since it was new 5 years ago; but now the battery only lives for about 2 minutes (just enough to get Mandrake booted up). Maybe it's because laptops weren't engineered to always have power applied to them?
Inferior But Marketable ... the list goes on and on ...
It's Better Manually
Incompetant Business Managers
(Yes, i know I just burned some karma... so what.)
I bet you say your name like Shawn but it's spelled like sea'n. Lol, funny stuff ;)
Have you tried to drain the Thinkpad's built-up capacitor charge? Some people recommend freezing it, but I think it works better to just take out the battery and then hold down the power button for a couple minutes.
My Thinkpad A31, gets closed and put in the laptop case every night, and goes home with me. I always think I'll open it at home and work a little, but I'm just not a company man I guess.
Then back to work, open it up, the same apps are open, reconnects fine.
Sometimes over a weekend or just randomly it won't come out of sleep, and I reboot it. so far 2.5 years it's been fine
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
They used to be amazing. My 380ed is a faithful server with a whole 5 minutes of UPS left. Using the keyboard is a pleasure, and the thing is built like a brick.
My r40e OTOH feels cheap. The only reason I got it was the nipple. Thinkpads are the only laptops I know with a nipple,
Aside from the X-series, which are lovely albeit a tad on the £££ side, I won't buy another one. There are better deals elsewhere, even if they lack the nipple. Ideally I'd have an ibook with a nipple - what is the batter life of the avreage low-end ibook after a year?
Shortly after the warranty expired (Isn't that how it always works?) my i8k began to lock up at random intervals. When power cycle the machine the bios wouldn't even finish booting. A few power cycles later, then it work. Eventually I determined that it was a hardware problem. Something is loose inside the machine, because lifting up on the back left corner seems to help, but of course disassembling the system doesn't find anything obviously wrong.
Probably the saddest part of this experience is that a friend of mine said he had the same laptop at work, and the same thing happened to his. I wouldn't get another Dell.
In fact I'm kind of wary of laptops in general anymore.
What happens with me is that I put the machine into hibernation, and when I wake it up, it freezes just after loading the hibernation file from disk. Once a given hibernation file freezes, it will ALWAYS freeze, without fail. The only way to recover the laptop is a normal boot, at which point it works fine.
One weird thing that I have noticed is that running Firefox is closely linked to the chance of failure to come out of hibernation. If I close ALL programs before hibernating, it always comes back up. If Firefox is running, it'll fail to come back up about 20% of the time.
I haven't tested extensively to see if it's ONLY Firefox that can cause this issue. That's my main use for that old laptop anyway, web browsing. Once I realized the cause of the problem, I started closing all programs before hibernating, and now it seems to work fine. I haven't had a hibernation recovery failure for a long time.
Damn lameness filters! HAR HAR HAR!
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Since we are talking about strange ThinkPad behavior, does anyone have any information about the USB ports on a T41, which ought to be 2.0, suddenly being only 1.1? I have found some indications in Usenet that it might be a result of Windows XP SP2 but no one knows for certain.
Isn't this tough to do if your computer isn't booting any more?
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
My wife's Toshiba laptop (no jokes or flames, please) has wake-up issues like you describe--a normal boot/re-boot is okay, but not wake-up. (The laptop is brand new, by the way.)
Curiously, as I posted in a different discussion about a Win XP desktop, the problem seems linked to Firefox. If the browser is left open for an extended period, the system(s) "lock up" and will not recover from sleep. I cannot recall either system exhibiting this problem when the browser was NOT left running.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Of the 20 or so T20s I support(ed - a couple died) removing the battery and the backup Lithium battery resolves the boot problem. The backup battery is easily accessible under the main battery with a single retaining screw. The problem ive found on T20s is the backlight failing.
I'm actually surrounded by carcasses of T600 laptops. My daily driver is a 600x/500PIII but I have other models from a 233 with a 12" screen (the first one - a gift that got me hooked on'em) to a couple of 400PII/600e's including one out on loan (until she pays me for it).
Haven't noticed any problem. If it doesn't wake up from sleep it's usually because the battery completely died while it was asleep. I plug it in, turn it on, and it works. This is with either mandrake or ubuntu, but I have noticed X works much, much better with ubuntu.
Yes, these have coin cells. And are you sure your problem isn't just a dying main battery? When they get aged they start acting odd. I resolved this issue by using the unit plugged into the wall.
Bought a used mobo off've eBay for $150.
The suffix -'ve represents "have" and is used with "should", "would", and "could": for example "should've" instead of *"should of". However, it appears you overcompensated, as in this case, it's "off of", not *"off've".
But enough about grammar national socialism; let's get back to laptops.
You might have fared better if you'd have spelled incompetent right. It's like compete, people!
This sort of thing happened to my R40 as well, but only when using ACPI. After I changed to using APM, everything is fine. But it works in XP with IBM's drivers. My current thinking is IBM has something non-standard in their ACPI implementation and the kernel people haven't worked around it yet.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
You are indeed correct. My apologies.
I'm usually a gud speeler, but i ges i had a brane fart.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=illusive
I wish there was a -2 Troll rating for being a jerk *and* incorrect.
mod parent up.
My company has several dozen of these and similar T21, T22, T23 and 600X thinkpads and this happens to at least one of them every few months. The solution has always been to remove both the main battery and the backup lithium battery, which is visible in the battery compartment once the main battery is out. Count to fifteen. Reinstall both.
goes into hibernation when I tell it to shutdown and when I close the lid, it wakes up! If I hit the power button instead of 'shutdown' command, it still goes into hibernation instead of shutting down. Have to touch power button again and then hold it in during post to get the damn thing to shut down completely. I suspect it's the power control software. Planning to compile kernel without and see what it does.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
1. unplug from AC
2. Remove battery
3. hold power button down for 10 seconds
This has worked on many occasions on a T-20. I think this drains a capacitor that can cause the problem you describe.
But why not start a class-action lawsuit just in case.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
I've just followed a couple of the links here, and a couple of people mention similar problems for i series Thinkpads. This is interesting, because I had an i Series Thinkpad with very similar problems myself. (I bought it in October 2001, which started to behave strangely in about December 2002, and which I gave up for dead in November 2003). I thought the problem was some consequence of the extremely heavy wear that the machine received from me, but it looks like it may have actually been a manufacturing or design fault.
Interesting. (I replaced the Thinkpad with a Dell laptop about a year ago, and the Dell is good so far).
Nice bit o googling but while illusive is a real word, the context makes it pretty clear the parent meant "hard to find" (elusive) rather than "illusionary" (illusive). So bad props to you for decorrecting someone who had it right.
I've had this happen to me twice. (The second time was tonight.) I'm trying to undock my IBM T42, and put it into suspend mode. It freezes. I can power it down, but can't bring it back up again.
I'm running Mandrake Community Edition 10.
Last time I sent it back to the factory; they replaced the motherboard. I'm going to do the same tomorrow.
Of course, the screen is quite often one of the more expensive items to replace on the laptop. You might be able to find a used laptop with good screen and cannibalize it for parts, but quite often when it comes to the screen going it's about time to get a new rig.