Occasional, seemingly random loss of power on T61

[rtrekell]

Hello,

I'm on a ThinkPad T61 bought in 2007. Over the past 4 years I have updated to Windows 7, replaced the battery, installed a new hard drive, and added additional RAM. The computer has never been dropped or otherwise seriously damaged.

For the last year or two I have experienced some problems with my computer abruptly shutting down. Even after a year or two I still cannot establish a pattern that determines why and when it happens. Here are the two ways it occurs:

This occurs when my computer is plugged in and when I am running on battery power. The computer will just shut off. It is not a slow shutdown like when it goes into hibernation, it is an instantaneous loss of power. It occurs when I'm actively using various programs and when it is just on and idle. This might happen several times a week and when it happens once, it generally occurs more than once in a short period of time.

The other way is when I'm not plugged in, my battery life will momentarily drop from a mostly full charge to nothing. The green battery light changes to the warning orange color for about one second but the computer still continues to shut down. In this case, it is a slow shut down where the moon light will blink for a short time and then the computer will continue to a complete shut down as it would if you ran your battery down to the last few percent. This happens a few times a week as well.

The latter example seems like a battery issue but the former doesn't. It is possible the two problems are entirely separate; I'm not sure.

Thanks for reading and any ideas that you might have.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

which GPU does your machine have?

also install tpfancontrol (a free download) and check the system temperature during your normal use.

Then download a program called Prime95 and run the program, see whether you can replicate the shutdown.

If the shutdown occurs, then this could mean that the laptop is shutting down due to overheating.

If that doesn't cause shutdown, try to run the laptop without the battery installed and see what happens.

[rtrekell]

Thank you for your reply.

My ThinkPad's GPU is listed as: Mobile Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family

tpfancontrol reports that the temp of my system during normal use is in the low 60's °C

I ran the Prime95 stress test for a while and I didn't have any problems. During the stress test my computer was peaking around 104 °C.

I will start using it without the battery for a while and see if I have any problems.

Any other ideas?

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

try the battery and see, your laptop would get to 104 degrees centigrade? usually at 95 to 100 degrees C, the computer would automatically shutdown.

Do you have any modified bios installed?

[rtrekell]

Yes, assuming tpfancontrol was giving an accurate measurement, it was breaking 100 C during the stress test.

And I haven't done much as far as BIOS goes. Granted I do have an oppressive lack of understanding when it comes to BIOS. The only conscious changes I've made were a few small updates shortly after I upgraded to Windows 7. I don't remember the exact updates but I recall them being various things dealing with ThinkVantage features for 7. These were downloaded from the IBM/ThinkPad site.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

download memtest+ and run that on the laptop.

I think you need to clean the laptop's heatsink/fan/vents, since at idle my T61 rarely breaks 55 degrees mark and it won't break the 80 degrees mark even after 3 hrs of Prime95 test.

The T61 i have T7250 CPU and with Intel GPU.

[rtrekell]

I will give the memtest a try here in a bit.

Now, when the laptop is sitting around 60 C, should the fan be running? Because TPFC tells me it's not. It did work when it starting getting real hot, but not otherwise.

Again, thank you for your help.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

it is probably due to the tpfancontrol on the silent mode, try changing to bios controlled mode.

[ixify]

Hi, I am having the same issue with my T61 with Intel Card. Type number : 8897-CTO

It is randomly shutting down no matter you are runnign on batteries or not. 

Check the temperature and it is not overheating at all.

I have investigated the problem and it looks like it is happening due to misconfiguration or missreading of sensors in Win7 kernel as far as CPU or GPU is concerned. There is an item in Event log that system unexpectedly shutdown that means that Win7 is catching the problem that means it is not a hardware problem.

I installed UBUNTU 11 and run stress workload for a long amount of time. My processor never overheat. nor the computer shut down. 

I think this is related to Windows 7 kernel. 

I will have to roll back to Vista but I am not really happy about it because Win7 is working just fine it is fast and nice.

Is there a fix from Lenovo for this problem? 

Irfan

[TuuS]

a hardware forced shutdown will log an event in windows. Windows doesn't have to catch a problem, it only needs to fail to catch an orderly shutdown and it assumes an unorderly one happened.

Your success in Linux might indicate a software problem, but it's not conclusive that windows is at fault. The first thing I'd do is update all your drivers and go from there.

ps. Typing on a T61 running Win7 that has been running 24/7 since early september without even a reboot,  and I have ten more T61 units throughout my house and office, most running win7 and none have this problem, both nVidia and Intel models.