T61 Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M.. garbled display problem!

[quatin]

The nVidia graphics card on my R61 just died. Are the solutions you are proposing for the T61 compatible for the R61 as well?

[TuuS]

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quatin wrote:

The nVidia graphics card on my R61 just died. Are the solutions you are proposing for the T61 compatible for the R61 as well?

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The models are very similar, but the boards don't directly swap. I have some good sources to get T61 boards,  but haven't tried to find any R61. If you want to send me your model and serial and date code (privately), I'll see what I can find out. I have an idea for some solutions, but would need to do some research.

[quatin]

Thanks for being a community lead in this issue. I'm surprised, but not surprised that it's the community and not the company that's being the most active.

I will have to dig up my laptop for the SNs, but before I take up any more of your time, how expensive are the ideas you are considering? Since these laptops aren't more than $250 on e-bay, I wouldn't spend too much on fixing it. I'm mainly interested in copying off the hard drive one last time and letting it brick.

[TuuS]

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quatin wrote:

Thanks for being a community lead in this issue. I'm surprised, but not surprised that it's the community and not the company that's being the most active.

I will have to dig up my laptop for the SNs, but before I take up any more of your time, how expensive are the ideas you are considering? Since these laptops aren't more than $250 on e-bay, I wouldn't spend too much on fixing it. I'm mainly interested in copying off the hard drive one last time and letting it brick.

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The "R" series is quite a bit cheaper then the "T" series in general, so I'm sure replacement parts are cheaper too, but I'd have to look into it to figure out what it would cost to get you a board for an R series. The problem with getting a cheap ebay system is you'll probably end up with the same thing you have now, an unreliable GPU, some have even doctored up the boards doing silly things like baking them in the oven, then selling them and hoping they work long enough that the buyer is stuck with them. If you want an inexpensive system that isn't prone to the nVidia failure, I can probably get you one for a very good price, or perhaps find you a system board that doesn't have nVidia graphics so you can fix yours and not have to worry about the problem returning. As for costs, a good fully tested board for a T series would probably be in the 150 range, although the extremely rare 08/08 boards are higher. I have gotten them cheaper at times when I can find damaged units at insurance auctions, but it's a lot of work to find them and you still have the risk of getting another risky nVidia gpu, and the auctions usually sell as-is. 

Again I expect the costs of replacement parts would be less for an R series, but any more specific details would require knowing exactly what you have and such details aren't allowed to be posted in the forum so send a private message with your model, serieal and date code and I'll see what I can find you.

[quatin]

I sent you a PM

. Lenovo seems to have denied that the problem exists in R61 laptops, which I'm guessing is purely based on the small ownership base and therefore lower amount of complaints. Is this a valid assumption or does the R61 have another problem?

What I recall happening is the laptop froze up with a garbled screen. I let it cool down and rebooted into an external monitor, which also displayed a garbled screen. I disconnected and swapped RAM slots with the same results. I can only conclude the GPU is fried.

[TuuS]

I agree, it does sound like typical NVS140m in it's way towards complete failure. Technically nVidia has never admitted any of the chips were defective, not on the R series or the T series. I'm not certain, but I believe there was a settlement to help pay the costs to replace all the failed boards and part of the agreement was to protect nVidia's reputation, so no one can "point a finger" at nVidia...  except the consumer of course, and we should, after all it's the nVidia product that is failing. I do know that lenovo spend far more then they received from nVidia doing free repairs in the 13month period, so I can't really blame them for stopping. 

[quatin]

I'm glad Lenovo and nVidia reached some sort of agreement to fix the problems. It's great that some of the T61 owners were able to get their machines fixed, however excluding R61 owners just because we are a minority is a personal insult to me.

[eecon]

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quatin wrote:

Thanks for being a community lead in this issue. I'm surprised, but not surprised that it's the community and not the company that's being the most active.

I will have to dig up my laptop for the SNs, but before I take up any more of your time, how expensive are the ideas you are considering? Since these laptops aren't more than $250 on e-bay, I wouldn't spend too much on fixing it. I'm mainly interested in copying off the hard drive one last time and letting it brick.

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If all you need is the data off the HDD and if your HDD is not password protected, you could simply put it into an external USB enclosure for 2.5" drives and plug it into any other computer.

However, if you do have a HDD password, you could still put it into any other R61 (it does not have to have the exact same specs) and it should boot up okay after entering your HDD PW during boot-up ..... you can probably find an old R61 at a local repair shop and pay the owner $20 to let you boot-up with your PW protected HDD and extract your data or make an image onto your own external HDD.  You probably even have one of those external HDDs already .... like for making your routine and regular HDD backups.

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[jtalbert]

We have a T61 type 7662. the Nvidia chip failed 14 months ago, was able to get it repaired and now guess what, the exact same thing just happened again. Major fail for Lenovo for using parts to repair a computer that have the same NVidia GPU failure as the first system board.

[TuuS]

I think the reason some repaired boards fail is the extreme heat that's required to resolder the gpu chip. When the board is first made, it's soldered before other components are added, but to change the chip later requires the board to be heated over 400 degrees which can be very stressful on other nearby components.

Obvously the vast majority of repaired boards don't fail, or we'd have thousands of members posting about it instead of only a handful, but if it's true that the same unreliable chip was used to fix yours, then I'd have to agree. 

You can always swap an Intel system board into your system, since yours appears to be a 14.1 widescreen, they are available.