Thinkpad R51 won't start

[Rosschild]

I have an approximately 2 year old IBM Thinkpad R51 which will not start anymore. Pressing the power button turns on the power light on the laptop and the fan starts. One or two other indicator lights come on as well (e.g light on CD drive). The laptop display doesn't show anything nor is anything displayed when the laptop is connected to an external monitor. I've tried booting from the hard drive (as normal) from a bootable CD, from a bootable CD with the hard drive removed, from the hard drive with the CD drive removed and powering on without the hard drive or CD drive connected (no boot deviced present). None of these produce different results (no errors, no beep codes). When they are connected, neither the hard drive nor the CD spin up. I've done all of these boot procedures on battery power, on wall power, and on wall power without the battery connected. I've also tried booting without the additional RAM module connected.

The laptop was working this morning at home. I closed the lid to put it to sleep and take it to school like I always do. Nothing unusual happened (no drops or anything). When I opened the lid, it wouldn't wake up no matter what I did. I then pressed the power button to turn it off then back on. It never came back on. I don't think it's even getting to POST, though I can't be sure with no display.

Any thoughts on what could be wrong or what the next step to take is? I think going any further is going to involve opening the laptop (which is long since past the warranty expiration).

~Ross

 

[Kyanzes]

You seem to have tried a lot of possible solutions. Have you checked if the CPU fan is working? Also, you could try to manually fiddle with the sensor that's responsible for sending the comp to sleep mode when you close the lid. Dunno, try to close / open it several times. Could be stuck in "forced" sleep mode. That would be my best bet. Ofc it could be anything else.

 

[Rosschild]

Thanks for the ideas. I've tried manually pressing the "lid close" sensor, as well as opening and closing the lid. This has no effect on the situation.

I think the fan I'm feeling is the CPU fan. If I remember correctly, I think there's some sort of heat pipe attached to the processor which is connected to the fan and vent. I could be wrong on that though. I'll find out when I open the laptop up.

Probably no time to try some more things until this weekend, but my current plan is to open the laptop up, check the CMOS battery and check if there are any obvious issues. Beyond that, my only other guesses are power supply or motherboard/processor. I think those are both beyond my abilities to fix and the cost of having them repaired seems like it would just be better to buy a new laptop.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Kyanzes]

Not really. All I could come up with is a Hardware Maintenance Manual for your notebook. I know it's not much but at least it could make it easier for you to take it apart (and reassemble it afterwards hehe).