I have a T430s, that is still on warranty.
About six months ago, I started having an intermittent problem, that sometimes when I would plug the power cord in, I would get error 0251. I would reset the clock and go about my business. This happened a few times, getting more frequent, and then one time Windows wouldn't start.
We bought support when we (my company) bought the computer. The tech guy came and opened it, and said it looks like there was some liquid spilled on the hard drive (a spot a couple of centimeters in diameter). Their standard solution is to replace the motherboard, but he couldn't do that because the motherboard was "damaged". Buying a new mother board he said would cost € 2100 (the laptop costs € 1700). So he said it is not a warranty issue he can solve.
I didn't like that answer, so we found a company to replace the motherboard for a few hundred Euros, but the error 0251 still occurred. That company took over two months to get that far, and seemed overtaxed.
In the meantime, we found a new IT partner. They replaced the CMOS battery. We just picked up the laptop a couple of days ago. I left the laptop closed with the power cable out over night. This morning I plugged in the laptop and (no surprise since I'm posting here) got the error 0251 again.
I would guess that there is:
1. A problem with the CMOS battery connection causing the battery to drain.
2. A short or a grounding problem in the power plug socket, or
I assume that the IT company did not lie about changing the battery.
Other details:
A. The problem never happens if I don't unplug and start/resume from hibernation.
B. The problme never happens when starting/resuming from hibernation with no power cord plugged in.
C. The problem never happens when I unplug shortly and then plug back in.
D. The problem is not dependent on the AC adapter. We have 5 Lenovo laptops in operation, and I have tried this with multiple AC adapters "bricks", both 65W and 90W.
I lean towards #1 above, as I would expect if it is #2 then the problem would occur every time or almost every time, and "C" would not happen.
I'm now using a timer on my phone to see if I can find out what the threshold is to get the error and then reproduce that.
I will try this a couplde days and then send the machine back to the IT guys/Lenovo, but any ideas would be greatly appreciated. The laptop has a new LCD display, and other than this one problem, works great.