Oh Great LJ Brain Trust...

[cjsmith]

My IBM ThinkPad X31 hangs when I unplug it. It may or may not dim the screen for a few seconds first (dimming the screen is in my power saver settings). Then the screen goes blank, the disk (as far as I can tell by ear and by the indicator light) shuts down, and the computer does not respond to anything except holding down the power button long enough to just plain shut it off.

It works fine on battery as long as it was booted on battery. It won't transition.

This has been going on for only a few days. For the first two years I've had it, it has never exhibited this problem.

Is there a way to make it STOP doing this?

edit: Dangit, I was going to try swapping batteries and removing the new memory and all, but now it HAS stopped. I can't get it to do it at all. Which means I can't trust it. ObSheesh: Sheesh.

Comments

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I could run over it with the Tahoe. :/

I hate when good computers go bad.

Sorry, this is not a useful answer; merely a commiseration. I once owned a Sony VAIO running Windows ME, after having owned a Compaq Pressario running Windows 95. Need I say more?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'll keep the Tahoe idea in mind. :-) And yeah, I know how you must have felt.

[trouble-shooting hat: limit the variables]

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

I don't have a solution per se... but one question to look at would be to try to determine if this is a hardware or software problem. My guess is that while it could be hardware, it may well be software -- assuming software (the OS) is what controls the transition between the two states. If it's a software-OS problem, you might be able to fix it by (backing up &) reinstalling the operating system. If that doesn't fix the problem, then it might be hardware -- and that bit would be more of a mystery to me.

This trigger any ideas for you?

Re: [trouble-shooting hat: limit the variables]

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

My thought was it was the new memory, but NOW IT STOPPED DOING IT and I can neither fix the problem for real nor trust it! Gah. :-)

[curmudgn]

Does it do this when docked or when undocked? Sounds like it's a corrupted hardware profile. Should it be that, and you have more than one profile, I'd try either docking or undocking it to get it into the state where it *doesn't* pull this stunt, then deleting the hardware profile where it *does*. Then dock or undock as appropriate, fire it up, and that will force it to rebuild the corrupt profile.

The other possibility is that your battery is going bad. Portable batteries are not meant to last more than 12 to 18 months, so an agéd battery might be the root cause. A third possible cause is a faulty charger board that isn't making the transition from AC to battery power.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Both docked and undocked -- and now it QUIT so no more troubleshooting and no trusting it! Grf! (A battery swap would have been an *easy* thing to try, too. We've got several compatible ones in the house, between the two of us. Cool idea.)

[curmudgn]

I think I'm gonna go with quasigeostrophy's opinion that the mobo's bad. The kind of "it's dead, Jim" you're describing sounds like either a bad charger board (which is usually integrated) or a bad mobo itself.

You might see if this link will give you some guidance about POST error codes. If the ThinkPad is anything like the Empire's portables, there will be error codes that come up even when you can't power on the system properly.

[eichin.livejournal.com]

I've been using a T41 for a few weeks now, and one failure I've seen it have is sort of like that - unplug it and it dies hard. Turns out that the reason was that it "forgot" for some reason that it could charge the battery (the battery was completely flat at that point.) Problem went away after that (and if you're seeing it boot at all on that same battery you've got evidence that it's not the same problem.)

It certainly *can* be a software problem (esp if you're running windows) - it goes into SMI mode on that transition. That wouldn't explain it starting to work again, though, unless bringing windows back up in safe mode caused it to fix something.

(And I *entirely* understand the "not trusting it" problem. It's not about it being flaky, it's about it betraying you...)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Huh. Definitely not the same failure. That must have been pretty annoying.

I don't THINK I brought it up in safe mode, but I realize now that one difference between "this morning" and "now" is I took some Windows updates. *sigh*.

It's not about it being flaky, it's about it betraying you...

Because it's a Windows machine, yes, that's exactly how I'd phrase it. O'course I also can't trust something that's merely flaky, but Windows is downright malicious.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I gave up on my ThinkPad A31 when I realized there was probably a broken trace in the motherboard - it would freeze up if I moved it even slightly. Probably got overflexed once too many.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yikes, that's pretty bad.

Normally I'm not hard on electronic stuff. In an age where people drop cell phones or run them through the laundry, mine is maybe six years old. I'm still using an original Palm Pilot. But I do carry this thing around a lot, so something like that is conceivable.

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

No advice, but love the userpic!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :)