Re: [Thinkpad] Need help: Thinkpad Crashing

Well, I'm not an oracle, but when Rob said something about a 770 crashing, it did correspond with my experiences with very first repairing of a ThinkPad.

I was quite surprised to see a CPU-card that had popped out of its socket, so I found a hammer and......naahhh.
Resetting it, brought it back to life again.

I don't know if that will help you out of this problem, but this, and the issues with the memory, could bring back some light at the end of the tunnel.

Brian
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jeff Wabik
  To: thinkpad@stderr.org
  Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 7:23 PM
  Subject: [Thinkpad] Need help: Thinkpad Crashing

  All -

  Help!

  I have a Thinkpad T22 running Windows 2000.. I have been trying
  to debug a problem with it for more than 2 years, and am now at the
  end of my rope. :) Any assistance you can provide is greatly
  appreciated.

  The problem seems a complete hardware crash -- not a Windows Crash: The
  T22 itself "resets" and goes from "fully operational" directly
  to the "power on" screen.

  What I know about the crashes:

  1. Crashes can seemingly happy "any time", but most regularly happen
      while running some graphics-intensive application. This is especially
      true if the graphics application is also IDE-device intense [e.g. A crash
      is guaranteed within 5 minutes if running something like Microsoft
      Flight Simulator; Within 30 minutes for some less-intensive graphics
      application or game. Probably once per week if I am just running
      normal windows applications -- recognizing that while windows itself
      is graphical, that the applications underneath are text based.. Like
      the MS-Office Suite].
  2. Each crash is precipitated by about 500ms of system "lock up", followed
      by what sounds like the devices on the IDE bus resetting, (I believe the
      sound is that of the heads on the drives doing a full re-position/reset),
      then black-screen, then back to the hardware power-on screen. Never
      windows blue-screen-of-death or any software message - it appears to be
      a hardware crash/reset.
  3. Without a power-cycle, the system will never fully reboot. The reboot
      starts, but in "Windows 2000" terms -- will only get as far as the first
      graphical "Windows 2000" screen with the cylon-like blue bar below (that
      shows the boot is in process). Eventually the cylon bar stops, and the
      system is locked and requires a power-cycle. So, the IDE devices appear
      to all come back online and operate (enough to load the boot code, at
      least).. but at some point of the boot-time inventory things lock .

  What I have done to diagnose:

  1. I have tried running these crash-prone applications on other machines --
      and they run fine.
  2. I have reloaded the OS from scratch several times, but the symptoms of the
      crash are the same.
  3. I have reloaded and updated every graphic and device driver that seems even
      remotely associated with the symptoms I describe above, but the crashes
      persist. I have also tried different versions of DirectX, etc -- no change
      in symptoms.
  4. I have booted the system having removed all IDE (and peripheral devices)
  except
      the hard disk (obviously), but the crashes persist.
  5. I have replaced the hard disk -- no change.
  6. I have tried each hard disk in a different laptop (a Thinkpad 600E) with
      the same applications, and it/they work(s) fine.
  7. I have run the Thinkpad self-test hardware diagnostics -- all tests pass
      successfully.
  8. I've scoured the net looking for a similar story/resolution, but have
  found none.
      (Doing a search with "windows" and "crash" as keywords is particularly
      useless.) IBM's helpline wants me to "Click on 'My computer'", etc, etc,
      bla, bla, bla.. You know where those attempts have gone.

  Hence, I have tried to isolate hardware and software problems by testing,
  new hardware, new software, etc.. but with no effect. I am now officially
  completely baffled. My fears are that there is some "undetectable" problem
  with the system board.

  Any guidance is appreciated. Thanks.

  -Jeff

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Received on Mon Sep 29 16:00:25 2003