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wrote:

Hey all,

 

I had a friend that had this same issue a year ago, build date 08/08. He received his T61p at the same time I got mine.

 

Today I went to power on my T61p, which had been asleep. I pressed the power button and it sat there and nothing came on screen. I decided to reboot by using the power button. When I tried to do this, I got a blank screen and, you guessed it, 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps.

 

I tried reseating the RAM, all combinations of both modules, and I tried hooking up an external monitor. None of that worked.

 

I think I'm just going to declare it dead. It gave me 5 years and 10 months of good service, used throughout college and after (although one of those years it was scarcely used). The original battery was dead after 3 years.

 

I just came here to post because it seems people think that a build date of August 2008 means that this issue won't happen to you, but I have just presented two cases, and I bet if I surveyed my college class (~1200 and everyone got the same one and probably a similar build date) I'd find that many people had the same issue with the same build date. But none of that matters, most are probably not in use today. A lot of people actually just killed their laptops for a warranty replacement before graduation. 

 

Anyone have a recommendation for a replacement?

 

I was hoping to make it to Broadwell release...

 

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Hi,

 

I can tell you that after spending years researching this that I can count the verified 08/08 failures on my fingers where the 2007 failures that I've personally seen are well into the tripple digits. Many of the 08/08 laptops that have failed have had the board swapped, usually for a non gpu warranty repair, but even a well made gpu can fail and a laptop used in a college is about the harshest environment for one of these laptop. Regardless of how well you care for it if you're starting and stopping the laptop for each class that is a lot of heat cycles which is the primary cause of stress in these chips. 

 

You are correct that an 08/08 can fail, but they don't have the same abnormal rate of failure that the older models have and the fact that yours survived nearly six years of mostly college use, it would probably be deemed an acceptable lifespan, although I'm still no fan of nvidia's durability. They seem to know how to make a gpu perform, but could take some lessons from Intel who's gpu chips virtually never fail.

 

If you want to replace the laptop my recommendation would vary depending on if you can stand the newer designs with no track poing, chicklett keys that offer no physical feedback when typing and some have even done away with the mouse buttons. The 16:9 aspect ratio is also annoying if you're using web pages that need to scroll or documents. They are great for video, just not for real work. If you can tolerate this new trend then check out the W540, or if you want to keep your T61p and aren't planning on using it for 3D gaming often you might consider an Intel board. You could easily get another 5-10 years of use out of one of these and the Intel gpu is actually ideally suited for a classroom environment where you run on battery and need to turn on/off often.

 

 

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TuuS wrote:

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Hi,

I can tell you that after spending years researching this that I can count the verified 08/08 failures on my fingers where the 2007 failures that I've personally seen are well into the tripple digits. Many of the 08/08 laptops that have failed have had the board swapped, usually for a non gpu warranty repair, but even a well made gpu can fail and a laptop used in a college is about the harshest environment for one of these laptop. Regardless of how well you care for it if you're starting and stopping the laptop for each class that is a lot of heat cycles which is the primary cause of stress in these chips. 

You are correct that an 08/08 can fail, but they don't have the same abnormal rate of failure that the older models have and the fact that yours survived nearly six years of mostly college use, it would probably be deemed an acceptable lifespan, although I'm still no fan of nvidia's durability. They seem to know how to make a gpu perform, but could take some lessons from Intel who's gpu chips virtually never fail.

If you want to replace the laptop my recommendation would vary depending on if you can stand the newer designs with no track poing, chicklett keys that offer no physical feedback when typing and some have even done away with the mouse buttons. The 16:9 aspect ratio is also annoying if you're using web pages that need to scroll or documents. They are great for video, just not for real work. If you can tolerate this new trend then check out the W540, or if you want to keep your T61p and aren't planning on using it for 3D gaming often you might consider an Intel board. You could easily get another 5-10 years of use out of one of these and the Intel gpu is actually ideally suited for a classroom environment where you run on battery and need to turn on/off often.

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Thinkpads are great for the college environment, and I'm completely satisfied with the amount of time it lasted. My T61p actually had a BSD for the first time in 3-4 years just a few days ago. The cause was related to the graphics driver, which I hadn't updated in years as well, so I thought that was odd.

 

As far as verifying that this is indeed a GPU failure, I just have no interest in resolving this issue. I've spent maybe 2 hours troubleshooting (I've seen the issue before as previously mentioned), but in my mind this laptop has been on its way out for a long time. 1 long beep, 2 short beeps, VGA port doesn't work, RAM isn't the issue, and zero functionality is enough for me. Its easy enough to swap out the HDD and say goodbye. I was just reporting an 08/08 failure that has the symptoms of GPU failure.

 

I've actually been looking for two years for a replacement (3 GB of RAM is not enough for browsing the web with many tabs) but I haven't found the right mix of ultrabook + large screen (15 in) size yet. I want the X1 Carbon in 15 inch form with a good LCD, as the original had a terrible LCD plus so-so battery life. I agree that some of Lenovo's choices for the new keyboard are not so great, and 16:9 sucks for work. Also 5-10 years is a stretch, RAM would be a huge issue with Windows, or whatever we'll be using by then.

These machines work very nice with 8gb ram if you're the type that wants to open 20-30 web pages while editing photos and watching videos. You would need to upgrade your windows version to use more than 3gb, but if you have a vista COA I could send you a 64bit disc to use with it, or if you have XP I can get the vist licenses very cheap. Of course the point is moot if you don't want to fix the laptop.

 

The last 15.4" model with this keyboard and 16:10 would be the 500 series. They aren't really an upgrade but they do have the advantage of using cheaper DDR3 ram and can take faster cpu chips. This series would also have the advantage of using the same harddrive, ac adapter, battery, keyboard and in most cases the lcd screen too as well as some other random parts. 

 

Also, it would probably be best if you don't allow any discrete graphics laptop use sleep or standby, it's best to keep it at operating temp when it's on. 

Mine actually had trouble dealing with 5-10 tabs alone, no video. If I needed to open a couple pdfs or documents as well it would slow down quite a bit. I thought about upgrading to 8GB of RAM a while back, but $200 is too much for the improvement. I ditched Vista and got a free upgrade to 7 shortly after it was released. I actually didn't have any issues with Vista, but 7 was faster. I looked into the 510 as well, the IBM Certified Pre-owned store has some good deals on those. Anyway, pointless discussion as I'll be looking for something newer I think.

I've never heard that laptops with discrete graphics shouldn't use sleep. I'm sure the EEs take this into account, especially now with all the focus on power gating and lower power states. I assume by operating temp you mean a range from ~30C to ~90C.

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wrote:
Mine actually had trouble dealing with 5-10 tabs alone, no video. If I needed to open a couple pdfs or documents as well it would slow down quite a bit. I thought about upgrading to 8GB of RAM a while back, but $200 is too much for the improvement. I ditched Vista and got a free upgrade to 7 shortly after it was released. I actually didn't have any issues with Vista, but 7 was faster. I looked into the 510 as well, the IBM Certified Pre-owned store has some good deals on those. Anyway, pointless discussion as I'll be looking for something newer I think.

I've never heard that laptops with discrete graphics shouldn't use sleep. I'm sure the EEs take this into account, especially now with all the focus on power gating and lower power states. I assume by operating temp you mean a range from ~30C to ~90C.

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Since you already are running Win7 you should be able to simply swap-in your T61p hard drive into a nice used T500 or W500 and Win7 should boot up w/o reinstallation of all your programs (it will ask for reactivation and you should be able to use your Win7 key since you are scrapping the T61p).  The T500 and W500 units also use the same docking station as the T61p.

 

Then run Lenovo System Update.   Easy as pie .... no muss, no fuss at a very low replacement cost.

______________________________

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wrote:
 I assume by operating temp you mean a range from ~30C to ~90C.

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I would consider operating temp of a nVidia GPU to be in the 55c to 80c range, but the actual temp isn't as important as keeping it steady. When you enter sleep or hibernate it cools close to room temp, then heats back up. Heat cycling is the most common cost of all electronics even dating back to the vacuum tube era but it's become even more of a problem with micro processors. Take for instance a bi-metal strip, this is a flexible strip with two different metals that expand at different rates and when heated will bend and if you put a pair of contact points on it you can make a thermal switch. Now if you imagined forcing that strip to not bend when heated the effect would be that one side would be stretched and the other was compressed. On the gpu's die there are several layers, all different materials that expand at different rates and they cannot "bend" to releave the tension so they are forced to stretch and compress and eventually they begin to crack. You could have many of these microscopic cracks and not have a problem, then one night your laptop goes to sleep and as the gpu cools you get a small crack in a critical area then when you try to reboot you have a hard gpu failure. Actually if you were to apply heat to the gpu it would probably boot again and that would be conclusive proof that the GPU is damaged and unrepairable, yet we still get posts like the one from a couple days ago that assume the heat has actually repaired the damage. 

 

, nice to see you my friend. your suggestion of going with a w or t500 isn't a bad idea, although the ATI graphics isn't as well supported by games and other 3D apps and driver updates are usually abandoned after a couple years, so I wouldn't consider it an upgrade, but they are pretty reliable. In my opinion for anyone who uses sleep/standby and carries the laptop to classes each day you'd be better with Intel graphics. 

 

 

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wrote:


I've never heard that laptops with discrete graphics shouldn't use sleep. I'm sure the EEs take this into account, especially now with all the focus on power gating and lower power states. I assume by operating temp you mean a range from ~30C to ~90C.

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I think what TuuS meant was to try and avoid lots of repeated daily sleep or standby cycles (like we often see fictional TV charactors repeatedly closing their screen lids whenever someone walks into the picture or scene, assuming the unit goes into sleep or standby mode with a lid closing).

 

I've been using a pair of T61p 08/08 units on docking stations daily for nearly 6 years and usually only reboot or shut them down once every 3 or 4 days.  However, I use external monitors, KB and mouse so they never have been really moved, bumped or shaken and thus this may not be a good real world example for comparison.

 

Anyway, I normally use standby before bed every night and also maybe once or twice daily (if leaving the house).

 

Plus, a daily shot from a can of air duster into the fan intakes of both units just for good measure (while the units are running).

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Hi, I hope this is not a dumb question, but, I just bought a T61 7664-05U with  nvidia.   It is a very nice lappy and I was hoping to use it for a while to watch netflix mostly.  Is it a foregone conclusion that it will eventually develop the same symptoms that have affected so many other nvidia systems, not just the lenovo's?

 

Thanks.

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wrote:

Hi, I hope this is not a dumb question, but, I just bought a T61 7664-05U with  nvidia.   It is a very nice lappy and I was hoping to use it for a while to watch netflix mostly.  Is it a foregone conclusion that it will eventually develop the same symptoms that have affected so many other nvidia systems, not just the lenovo's?

 

Thanks.

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As I recall the failure rate for that model is running at around 1% or 2% .... mostly all from units built before 08/08 (Aug 2008).

 

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:smileyhappy:  OK, that is good news, thank you.