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IBM Thinkpad -- Sudden Laptop Death Syndrome? 101

Posted by Cliff from the beware-the-hiberante-revive-cycle dept.
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."
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IBM Thinkpad -- Sudden Laptop Death Syndrome? More

IBM Thinkpad -- Sudden Laptop Death Syndrome?

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  • Something hosed in the power controller? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mellon ( 7048 ) * on Thursday December 02, 2004 @10:53AM (#10974060) Homepage
    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?
    • I had a Compaq (HP) laptop that had recovery issues that were entirely due to bad memory, which was recalled and replaced for free. All recovery issues were resolved. See this story [slashdot.org] and similiar. You may want to inquire about replacing that RAM.
    • I have similar symptoms with my Dell Inspiron 9100: Hibernate from Windows XP usually works fine, but it stops working if I have my USB wireless optical mouse plugged in when I hibernate, and unplugged when I restore from hibernation.
    • 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.

      • Re:Yeah, mine, too (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Ha ha, you have a Toshiba!

        Oh, you meant about having a wife... Ha ha you have a wife, and I don-- er...

        I have to go. No, no, just something caught in my eye...

  • 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.
    • I had a Mac G4 titanium that would not power on due to a bad battery. Even with the battery removed it would not power on. Went through all the PRAM reset proceedures, etc., no go. Installed a good battery and everything worked.

  • Something similar (Score:4, Informative)

    by keesh ( 202812 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @11:05AM (#10974185) Homepage
    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.

  • wow (Score:2)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 )
    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?
    • It isn't ACPI that sucks badly, it is the Windows 98 implementation of ACPI that sucks badly. As well as bad hardware implementations of some ACPI functions on some machines.

      I run the 2.6.10-rc2 kernel and have great ACPI support on my nforce 3 based AMD64 machine.
    • 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?

      There are more advanced versions of Windows than Windows 98?

      Are you posting from the future or something?
      • Was that sarcasm? I'm no fan of Microsoft, but at least NT and its descendants are almost stable. 98SE wasn't really.

        Don't bother, I'm not going to get backed into a position where I'm defending something that came from Microsoft. That would just be too surreal.
  • 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.
  • 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....
    • 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

  • Happened to me. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In conjunction with the main Lith-Ion battery going out, actually.

    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 ...poof, it turns off.

    Motherboard replacement - my first
    • My aging Thinkpad 600E is quite literally a Frankenstien machine. At some point, I've replaced everything on the machine other than the motherboard and bottom casing.

      It's been very piecemeal, like limping along a 1966 Mustang, so the cost has been mostly transparent. Plus, I can't say it's a hard machine to work on, and the parts are cheap on eBay.

      • I've never replaced the laptop screen - that's about the next thing. Right now it seems to take awhile to "warm up" and has several dark patches on it.

        I'm getting ready to put in a DVD burner, new HD and more RAM. The T20 is a good laptop, just needs a few upgrades. Otherwise I'd get a new T43, but at $2200+ with all the options I'd want ...too expensive.
        • 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.
  • 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.

  • Sorry, forth is not the answer... (Score:4, Funny)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis&ubasics,com> on Thursday December 02, 2004 @11:46AM (#10974676) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • What operating system are you using with it?
    • This happens to me often, and as far as I can tell it has something to do with java apps running on the background. The most reliable way to reproduce the problem for me is to go to the CNN web site. The java icon immediately pops up on the taskbar, which tells me that CNN runs java applets. Then close the lid, placing the computer in sleep mode. When I reopen the computer the amount of times it takes to start is usually proportional to how long the lid was closed.

      • This happens to me often, and as far as I can tell it has something to do with java apps running on the background.

        Thanks for the tip! I'll have to check this out, because I have a JBuilder always running at my laptop.
  • 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?

    • It depends on the model and the OS. My Thinkpad can't suspend or Hibernate right now, the OS will crash, but I'm quite certain that it is because of some bad VPN drivers which I'm using.

      My desktop suspends beautifully, it even knows when not to... i.e. if idle, the screen shuts off, then a few minutes later it suspends. But if it's doing something which might seem idle, like playing MP3s, recording video etc, the screen shuts off and it never suspends until that activitiy stops.

      Those are Windows machi

    • I have the same issue with my (very old) NEC VersaNote 5060X. It's a P1-166Mhz so I don't use it very much anymore, but sometimes it's back from sleep within a couple of seconds and sometimes it takes forever...
  • 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

  • Put it in the fridge (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theinfobox ( 188897 ) on Thursday December 02, 2004 @12:21PM (#10975074) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • 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.
  • 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 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 ... I knew I would have to wait through the various standard procedures before I got ac
    • I have had a similar power problems with the Satellite Pro S255, still running the xp/sp1 on it - I use it for a rendering machine in a small farm. One of the other things that was somehow related to this was the exhaust port building up a lot of dust and causing failure. Clearing up the dust solved some of the issues, and reinstalling the base software (off the 3 toshiba cd's) seemed to clear it up. As soon as I install other apps though, it seems to get back into the fail to hybernate loop. The only other
  • 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
  • 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 t
    • Don't underestimate the culture shock of losing the nipple. My gf has an old trackpad Compaq Armada and using a trackpoad just sucks.

      And trust me, after using the Armada, or a work Dell, nothing in the world feels as sturdy and well built as an R40!

      Other than total unpredictability about behavior when switching between an external monitor @ 1280 x 1024 and the internal at 1024 x 768 (sometimes the LCD will try to do a virtual screen, sometimes it won't, sometimes when put back in the doc it will remember

    • My iBook is about a year old, and I get four or more hours of battery life out of it. It's a nice machine.
    • Yeah, iBooks are pretty good (the new ones don't have the logic board problem that was sort of like the Thinkpad issues), though like any laptop, if you rely on the battery you should have a spare in the drawer at home to minimize downtime if the battery dies.
  • 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
    • You can find I8K parts on eBay [ebay.com]; I bought a replacement motherboard there about a year ago when mine stopped working. IIRC, you can get a replacement motherboard for $150-$200.
    • I have actually fixed a problem with a cousin's laptop by taking it apart, and just unplugging and plugging every board / wire I could find. End result is a perfectly working laptop. The problem re-occured and I actually found a daughter-board that was comming loose. I super-glued it down and it never had another problem.

      Just take your laptop apart and try pressing down on any board that seems to plug into another one.

      Good luck.
    • When I worked for a local accounting firm, we had about 50 Dell Latitude CPi series machines. Some of them developed problems with not powering on, random reboots, etc. Dell came out and replaced system boards on a few of these, and then Dell discovered the problem...not enough lock-tite on the screws holding the bottom case on. Comes to find out, the screws would work themselves loose and cause grounding problems with the system. After we learned about that, standard procedure was to tighten the screws whe
  • 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.

  • 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.

    • I saw mention of that problem while looking for a solution to another T41 USB problem we're having at work. We don't have SP2 rolled out yet, so I haven't seen the USB 2.0 ports becoming 1.1 yet. Maybe I'll pass word to my boss about the problem so we can make sure we test things out. I have not heard a single complaint about this with SP 1. Don't know how many T41's are out there right now, but we have a queue of about 100 waiting to go out.

      I'll deploy a new laptop in the evening, and when the user ge
    • My T40P has this wierd problem with its motherboard where devices will some times show up as 1.1 and some times as 2.0 devices.

      For example, plug in USB hard drive under Windows XP and it detects the drive as a fast 2.0 drive. Pick up the laptop and by flexing the case all of a sudden the drive is un-detected and then you get a pop up saying that the device is a high speed device on a low speed controller.

      I ran the MS USBView tool and you can see the device hopping from one hub to another, its really wierd
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • Here's the fix (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bob Bitchen ( 147646 ) on Sunday December 05, 2004 @04:00PM (#11002656) Homepage
    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.
  • 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
  • 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.

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