T61 Black Screen [ Edited ]

[Erikgoranzon]

Thank you so much for answering! Greatly appreciated.
My laptop has 08/07

I have uninstalled the video driver and installed a clean video driver. Den re-installed the power manager including driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSBax4V-P0w
I filmed the process when trying to put the computer to sleep. You can hear the fan kick in after 1min into the movie. The laptop must be on for that to happen, right?
It's still the same as before

I wanted a fresh heatsink with new thermal paste since it was 4years old.
I have not updated the bios. Something work mentioning is that hibernating worked right after I formatted the computer.

[TuuS]

Your date of manufacturer is before the nVidia problems were fixed, but it's a date that has a low failure rate, and your problem doesn't seem to be consistent with a typical gpu failure, so this may be good news. 

I can see that your computer is failing to go into hibernation, but you say that's only one part of the puzzle/problem, the main problem is the screen randomly shuts off, correct?

One thing you can do is try running the computer on a Linux liveCD boot disc. I'd recommend ubuntu (ubuntu.com). Get and burn the disc and start from it electing not to install, just to try it without making any changes to your computer. If you can run the computer sucessfully without this problem using Linux operating system, then it's safe to say you have a software problem and dispite your efforts to reinstall the effected programs, it's not fixed the problem. If the problem exists in linux too, then it would be hardware related.

I'm also eager to hear what other member may feel the problem is too.

[Erikgoranzon]

Thanks again for hur answer! I tried Ubuntu from the DVD and sleep mode WORKED!!! Didn't have the option to hibernate but i guess this will work since sleep mode worked. I think the screen turning black is synonym to not being able to sleep/hibernate in windows. What I first thought were two problems are probably related to one (can't hibernate/sleep) My friend has the exact same laptop t61-7665 (08/07) could I somehow compare my laptop to his and seacrhc the problem that seems to be a driver problem??

[Slyone]

I have t61 08/02 whats the failure on that time frame. relative of course....

[TuuS]

Since you've determined this is a software problem, the easiest way to fix it might be to reformat and reinstall windows. If you do, the first thing I'd recommend doing is to run system update, this will install all lenovo drivers and updates, then confirm everything is working. If you let windows update install the drivers you might end up with something thats not 100% compatible. It's hard to say what went wrong here, but starting over would be easier then trying to sort out the cause.

Good Luck

[TuuS]

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Slyone wrote:

I have t61 08/02 whats the failure on that time frame. relative of course....

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Your date is February 2008, which is about when it's believed nVidia was re-engineering the GPU design. The best evidence suggests the updated chips followed shortly after your unit was built, but the old design wasn't eliminated until August 2008. On an 08/02 I'd say it's unlikely to have the improved chip, even if some were shipped in February they wouldn't have made it into a laptop that fast, but there really is no way to know because nVidia won't even admit the bug exists. I wouldn't be overly concerned about it though, millions of these units have been in service for over 4years and probably will be for years to come, the actual failure rates are small, but it's the costs and the difficulty obtaining reliable replacement boards that make the problem significant. 

[Erikgoranzon]

SOLVED
I went into control panel - windows updates - installed updates - and then I uninstalled all the security updates! Now I can sleep and hibernate the computer.
Yesterday I uninstalled all the updates and hotfixes (left the security updates) and problem persisted.
Now today after also removing the security updates it worked.
I also went into bios yesterday and disabled the wake on lan feature for the WLAN.
Thanks for the help in this issue. Glad that it finally works.

I dont know which security uppdate that caused it course I didn't have the time to restart after every security update I uninstalled because there were 63 of them.

[Erikgoranzon]

HEELP, PROBLEM IS BACK

After succesfully using sleep and hibernate for two days I now have the same problem again.

I put the computer in the dock and tried to hibernate and nothing happened (the screen turned black, speakers turned off, the wifi, battery, power lights were on).

What could have happened in two days that made the problem reveal itself again?

[TuuS]

perhaps automatic updates?

[Erikgoranzon]

Hi

no i had set auto update to never update again.

BUT however after formating the computer yet another time and installed every update out there from lenovo and microsoft I did get it to work. sleep mode worked every time until today. I had probably set the computer in sleep mode 5 times this day (the computer sleeps by it self after 15min on battery). Then all of a sudden the problem was back without no warning. I have not done anything except writing in a word document from the time it worked until the time it stoped working again. 

Anyone smart out there who can figure this out. It seems like its hardware failure but it all works in ubuntu and sometimes in windows so should be software problem right?

Thanks