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."

Comments

Something hosed in the power controller?

[mellon]

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 I _think_ these systems no longer have a separate battery for their CMOS RAM, because, well, CMOS RAM is obsolete - so you shouldn't need to go hunting for that.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.

Re:Something hosed in the power controller?

[FooAtWFU]

Indeed, the first thing local tech support does when your ThinkPad won't boot or do anything is to unplug it, remove the battery, smack the battery around a little (beat it against your palm a few times), and re-insert it- boom, it works. I've been hailed as a genius for doing this on multiple occasions. :)

(Well, I am a genius, but for different reasons. =b)

Put it in the fridge

[theinfobox]

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.