battery and power leds blinking, no boot, no fan

[evtoma]

Hi,

My model is 7734-11u.

1. I've turned on, logo screen freezes (XP).

2. Turned on again and won't start initialization, no fan, black screen, power button reacts so I can turned off.

3. opened (not first time opening a laptop or my laptop), cleaned memory slots, cleaned battery contacts, reset the bios battery -> turned on -> screen has a short start of white light, battery (orange) and power leds blink regularly, no fan started, RAM a bit warm (normal temperature) power button doesn't react, DVD doesn't react, I should pull the battery off in order to stop it.

I need advice, is an long time workhorse of mine.

[evtoma]

1 more detail: when I connect de plug to laptop, the 2 leds blink again, also regularly and they keep blinking even after I remove the power supply.

[evtoma]

Finally I've got to boot mode of widows.
What I've done:
1. I've disconnected all devices that can be disconnected from main board. The same blinking
2. turned on with power suplly in. and then make shock by interrupting the main voltage in short pulses. The battery led got green! Still no fan spinning.
3. I spinned manually the propeller of fan, it begin spinning! (I remember old diesel car started by hand, 20 years ago).
4. I assembled everything back except covers. Still no initialization but I got rid of blinking leds.
5. I've seen one of the memory cards a bit hot, unusually. I pulled out and system booted. Now I have bios bad checksum.
6. got in bios setup, did only time setting -> I can boot from hdd, now I have windows menu, but in the boot time I got "blue screen again"

I'll come back

[evtoma]

Still in problems= read error la hdd diagnostic, maybe I'll run MHDD or a Linux live.
regarding the first problem:
1. I've changed now the working memory card to the slot where I removed the problematic card from and I've got the folowing beep code: "1-3-3-1 pause 1-4-1-1"
2. I removed the card (so no RAM at all) the code is now only 1-3-3-1
3. I fullfill both RAM slots and laptop doesn't start at all, black screen, fan works, leds green, anything else dead, no beep signals, no white led for keyboard.
4. I put the "problematic" card instead of working one, leaving empty the slot that generates beeps. The system starts and boot till logo.
It seems that one of the slots has been damaged, I would like to know why but I think I'll never know. If this was the origin of ALL of problems described above, I don't know, but I espected such brand as IBM is to be more reliable. The magnesium case it's ok, but electronics seems to fail.

[evtoma]

mhdd said unrecoverable error. Running the hdd in compatibility mode gave me more time. Now I'm looking for a new sata. cheers!

[Agotthelf Community Moderator]

Hello evtoma,

thank you, for this write up. Sounds you´re really experienced!

The R61´s are good and sturdy machines.

1-3-3-1 means ram failure

1-4-1-1 - RAM Failure on data bits xxxx of high byte of memory bus

I wish you can figure it out. Keep us up to date!

Edit: Which slot 0 or 1 did you use for checking the ram?

If the Slot 0 is empty then the ram in slot 1 will not work alone.

[evtoma]

Thanks Agotthelf!

First time when I seen the offer of the store I knew it should be mine. It was very limited edition there. And I used in the office as well as in telecomunications cabines, dust, on soil, with cofee, bread and food among and under keys, in car on broken roads, with hdd active protection behind. In games like call of duty or unreal tournament - right, with low details, or with 5 linux machines opened in the same time in virtualbox, in GUI mode. I've programmed alcatels and ericssons directly from an XP in a virtual dedicated machine. It fallen few times while working, on hard floor, I've changed only hdd, once, and no scratch or crack on case! THIS is a real machine. When it didn't start I felt veeery confused, it is the most loyal machine I ever had, I reccomend it.

On the other side I'm very sorry to see the problem with the second slot (the slot 1). I've checked both slots in all combination from the beginning, it's clear the slot 1 answers to any of the RAMs only with error codes. If I put them together, it's blacking out. Now please let me know if the frequency of the RAM could influence somehow this pitfall. The original 1GB RAM is a korean hynix PC5300, while another one, bought as extra RAM, is a 2GB OCZ PC5500. The original has worked on slot 0.

I never got in problems till I put an external screen to the monitor output. These series of problems seems to be triggered by attaching this screen. Strange but true. I've tried to check the screen of a friend that complained his computer doesn't start. The problem was .. the same. After changing the RAM slot, PC started. Few hours later after I checked the screen, I've discovered the same bitter feeling. I seen the screen worked and I turned off the laptop. Next morning it didn't weak-up... Another strange detail is that, from time to time, the video driver stops working, the laptop stucks for tens of seconds and then came back with a very ugly screen, saying an error about video driver. This error takes place especially after long period of using (sometimes a week or 2) without hard restart but suspend to RAM.

Cheers!

Emil