T60 freezes with IBMTPCHK errors

[Gstacy]

Hello. I recently purchased a T60 on Ebay, with no returns allowed. The computer works well in general, but it has frozen up many times. When this happens it totally freezes, I can't even pull up the task manager to shut it down. (It has a dead battery, so I have to unplug it to cut all the power, to make it reboot.) It usually happens when I'm online, but it has  also happened when I'm editing videos and once it even happened during shutdown.

I have run many, many scans and system restores on the computer, I have posted to various forums and tried a number of suggestions, but the darn computer keeps freezing. After the computer freezes I'll look at the event viewer, and often there won't be any obvious culprit... But lately I've had a couple of freezes and then the event viewer will say this message: "The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: IBMTPCHK.

It's been suggested before that I should update my drivers on the Lenovo site, but my computer keeps saying everything is up to date and I'm not sure what drivers to look for.

Here's the Speccy log from a few days ago: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/BiQgWefvXYVUKm7gfqSVA2p

I'm getting desperate here. Any help would be much appreciated!

[ajkula66 Guru]

Welcome to the forum!

Pull the battery out and run the machine on adapter only. The freezing will most likely go away.

Once you've verified that part, just order a new *genuine* battery and call it a day.

Good luck.

[Gstacy]

I will indeed try that, but it could take a day or more before I know if it worked. (The laptop sometimes freezes twice in a day, sometimes it's more like every other day.)  You don't think the IBMTPCHK errors have anything to do with the freezing?

[ajkula66 Guru]

My experience is that a dead battery will freeze a *6x series machine in a heartbeat on many occasions.

I honestly have nothing else to recommend until the battery is ruled out as the likely culprit.

[Gstacy]

OK, I'll try it. Thanks very much for the advice!

[Gstacy]

Well, I took the battery out a day or so ago, but then my computer froze up again tonight... And when I restarted it and checked the event viewer, there was yet another one of those IBMTPCHK errors listed, right around the time when the problem happened. I'm really starting to think that's the cause.

What happened was, I was clicking the volume panel and accidentally unclicked the "mute" button on the microphone... The laptop suddenly made this LOUD, steady beep noise, and the screen froze and the noise wouldn't stop until I unplugged the machine to restart it.

[ajkula66 Guru]

Try adjusting the hard drive protection software to a lower level.

Good luck.