T400s - screeching feedback and crashes out

[bungee]

Two month old T400s and on booting, once reaching the Windows desktop get massive feedback. 

NOT amenable to:

* mute buttons on keyboard (mike or speakers)

* volume control

* plugging something into the frustrating SINGLE audio jack

Windows XP does not complete startup. After about 30 seconds of screeching get blue screen of death, memory dump and shutdown.  Repeated this a dozen times over the last day.

* Can't access Control Panel to try to adjust audio settings.

* Can't fix by interupting the boot with F1 - can't seem to find anything in the BIOS setup to change?

* Tried removing battery and booting, and booting from battery with no A/C in case it was power supply related. No help.

Definitely feedback between speakers and microphones (varies with lid position) but serious enough to shut down the PC.

Prior to happening was trying to get a USB microphone working (without luck).

I presume this is a sound card / system board problem but looking for suggestions in case it was something like the volume settings jammed or I could overcome by muting the mike or speakers.

[bungee]

My T400s is excellent but the single jack for both microphone and headset input a continuing problem.

I do a fair bit of work with voice recognition software and dictating sound into presentations. Most of the USB style headsets have a short mike arm and are not very clear for quality speech input.  LIkewise the USB/Bluetooth short earmounted units. 

My best headset has a microphone with a boom and foam cover which reaches the side of the mouth - but it just won't work on the T400s with its standard two stereo 3.5 mm audio plugs.  In fact every headset on the market other than USB will not work in the T400s.

You can only plug in the microphone which turns the laptop speakers off when inserted (collar switch).  So you can't hear back in the head set.  But worse is that the screen microphones remain active and you have to fight with the settings to try and turn them off and turn the microphone input on.

You can't just use a 3.4mm audio splitter as the headset and mike channels are different.

Has anyone found a solution which enables you to plug a standard stereo headset and microphone combo into the SINGLE jack on the T400s? 

Lenovo doesn't seem to have an adapter either.

[bungee]

The product specs on my T400s suggest up to 6 hours battery life.  In your dreams!

Best I have had is about 2 hours with the supplied 44Wh internal battery.  I recognize a trade-off in such a nice laptop with light weight is a thinner battery but this just doesn't meet the published specs at all.  Have turned off all wireless applications and using power saving modes.  Still 2 hours.

Bought a Select-bay for the DVD drive space 32Wh and together they crank up to 5-6 hours.  I'm not playing movies or doing intense video work - just plonker emails and Word documents.

Anyone else find this battery life problem with T400s? 

moderator note: threads merged, please do not split the discussion into multiple threads, in regards to only one affected system. thank you.

[TheDude]

yes you need a specific adapter for this.

Somebody on one of hte boards suggested the one for Macs would work. I don't know.

[Sagar_C]

Sorry to rack up an old thread. But any solutions yet?