Take a look at our
ThinkPads.com HOME PAGE
For those who might want to contribute to the blog, start here: Editors Alley Topic
Then contact Bill with a Private Message

[SOLVED] X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

X20/X21, X30/X31, X40/X41 Series
Post Reply
Message
Author
natgab
Freshman Member
Posts: 78
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: san diego, california

[SOLVED] X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

#1 Post by natgab » Mon Mar 17, 2014 7:02 pm

My niece now has my old Thinkpad X40 for websurfing.

It started to flicker on boot and not keeping BIOS settings. My brother figured it was the BIOS battery and ordered one and asked if I could install it since I knew the insides already. When I opened it up and swapped out the battery, on boot it gave me the screen flicker, two beeps and then goes dark. Also get the beeps with the original BIOS battery. The X40 will beep if a key is pressed.

The hard drive is still humming after the beeps (new 4200rpm 30GB HDD). Main battery is a good, I had bought a generic 9 cell on ebay for it. Original power pack. Tested with and w/o extra Crucial 512MB RAM. Lenovo says Two short beeps and a blank screen means System board or DIMMs. Any ideas of what to check / reset?

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-44114

EDIT:
I plugged Thinkpad into external monitor, boots to BIOS w/o beeps. BUT, it gave the following error:

Code: Select all

Resource Conflict PCI network card slot 01. Bus 02. Device 02. Fuction 00
It tells me to press F1 to set-up, but don't see anything wrong. I can hit escape, it will go as far as black screen with Windows XP logo and then stops.

EDIT 2:
Googling, Error seems to be regarding the miniPCI WIFI card ( Atheros ). I have reset it, and also turned it off in BIOS but still not getting past black boot screen with Windows XP logo. I can boot to safemode, can't get last known working configuration to start. Any advice would be appreciated.
Last edited by natgab on Mon Apr 28, 2014 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thinkpad X260 ( # 20F6-CTR1WW) 2.3HGz i3 6100u, 16GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm HD, Intel HD520, 1366x768 IPS
Thinkpad T43 - bkup | Thinkpad R50 - DOA | Thinkpad R61 - RIP | Thinkpad X40 - In Use

natgab
Freshman Member
Posts: 78
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: san diego, california

Re: X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

#2 Post by natgab » Fri Mar 21, 2014 7:15 pm

Making a 2nd post to keep things organized.

With the miniPCI WIFI card turned off in BIOS still, I was able to boot to Puppy Linux on USB. Linux works without problems. Linux also gives me the error for WIFI card. So I can at least assume that it is dead, and not a software problem.

I was able to boot to Windows, go to my admin. account and I am running MS essentials and updates (ethernet plugged in) on HDD. I did also try clicking (Fn)+F7 to see that it was not accidently on presentation mode. I was not able to get built-in LCD to work. Rebooted, got back to Windows but only with ext. monitor.

Is there anything to check or look for to know if the built-in LCD is broken? TIA
Thinkpad X260 ( # 20F6-CTR1WW) 2.3HGz i3 6100u, 16GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm HD, Intel HD520, 1366x768 IPS
Thinkpad T43 - bkup | Thinkpad R50 - DOA | Thinkpad R61 - RIP | Thinkpad X40 - In Use

rkawakami
Admin
Admin
Posts: 10327
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2006 1:26 am
Location: San Jose, CA 95120 USA
Contact:

Re: X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

#3 Post by rkawakami » Fri Mar 21, 2014 8:23 pm

I'd say you have two, unrelated problems:

- bad WiFi card; I'd recommended pulling it out of the system instead of relying on BIOS to turn it off. If there's a power issue with it, it could affect anything else that is driven from the same power controller. I don't know if the BIOS control will totally cut off power to the MiniPCI card so the safest thing to do is yank it out.
- bad inverter / LCD panel / lid switch / motherboard causing lack of display on the LCD. "Flickering" sounds like it could be a bad/weak inverter board OR a bad / marginal backlight inside the LCD panel. It could also be as simple as a stuck lid switch or loose cabling. If the display had a pink / reddish tint to it, I'd lean towards a bad backlight; that's basically fixed by replacing the entire panel. If it was bright white when it was last working, then make sure the lid switch is not pushed down into the case and check the seating of the LCD ribbon cable to the motherboard, the inverter board to the ribbon cable and the backlight plug to the inverter. All of those things cost no $$$, just some of your time to disassemble the system. If none of those things fixes the problem, the next thing to check would be the fuse on the motherboard that protects the inverter board. Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly which one to check at the moment. I may be able to determine that when I get home tonight. You would need a simple multimeter, good eyes and steady hands to measure the fuse. Assuming the fuse is okay, then that leaves the inverter and the LCD panel. Since an inverter board is cheaper than a LCD panel, swap out the inverter board with one that is known to work. You can find them for ~$10 to $20 on eBay or somebody here may have a spare. If a known good inverter doesn't light up the panel, then the problem is probably with the backlight.
Ray Kawakami
X22 X24 X31 X41 X41T X60 X60s X61 X61s X200 X200s X300 X301 Z60m Z61t Z61p 560 560Z 600 600E 600X T21 T22 T23 T41 T60p T410 T420 T520 W500 W520 R50 A21p A22p A31 A31p
NOTE: All links to PC-Doctor software hosted by me are dead. Files removed 8/28/12 by manufacturer's demand.

rkawakami
Admin
Admin
Posts: 10327
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2006 1:26 am
Location: San Jose, CA 95120 USA
Contact:

Re: X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

#4 Post by rkawakami » Sun Mar 23, 2014 12:41 am

Follow-up...

Fuse F3 appears to be the one protecting the inverter. However I can't tell you exactly where it is on the motherboard. Since most of the other older Thinkpads also have a similar fuse and it's usually located near the LCD connector, I'd suggest looking in that area. Odds are that the fuse is on the top side of the motherboard, but there's always the chance it's on the bottom.
Ray Kawakami
X22 X24 X31 X41 X41T X60 X60s X61 X61s X200 X200s X300 X301 Z60m Z61t Z61p 560 560Z 600 600E 600X T21 T22 T23 T41 T60p T410 T420 T520 W500 W520 R50 A21p A22p A31 A31p
NOTE: All links to PC-Doctor software hosted by me are dead. Files removed 8/28/12 by manufacturer's demand.

natgab
Freshman Member
Posts: 78
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: san diego, california

Re: X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

#5 Post by natgab » Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:01 pm

rkawakami wrote:Follow-up...

Fuse F3 appears to be the one protecting the inverter. However I can't tell you exactly where it is on the motherboard. Since most of the other older Thinkpads also have a similar fuse and it's usually located near the LCD connector, I'd suggest looking in that area. Odds are that the fuse is on the top side of the motherboard, but there's always the chance it's on the bottom.
---I will disconect the WIFI card. Makes sense, if its messed up it can still affect the rest of the PCI controller. I will take a look at everything that is connected to the screen ( inverter, cable, screws ). Hopefully something is loose. The LCD looks bright, the IBM logo and Thinkpad text look normal the 2-3 seconds they flash on the screen before going dark. The same as they do on the external monitor.

Sidenote:
Cleaning out my cousin's HP laptop because of clogged up CPU fan. Wow, big difference between a laptop design for you to access the inside and one made for you to call tech support and pay. The HP has about 20+ screws all over place, same as my PPC Apples before they went to full on gluing everything.

Sidenote 2:
My XFCE CPU thing on my panel says my cores are at 42C with just my browser on. Is that ok?
Thinkpad X260 ( # 20F6-CTR1WW) 2.3HGz i3 6100u, 16GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm HD, Intel HD520, 1366x768 IPS
Thinkpad T43 - bkup | Thinkpad R50 - DOA | Thinkpad R61 - RIP | Thinkpad X40 - In Use

natgab
Freshman Member
Posts: 78
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: san diego, california

Re: X40 - Two beeps & screen flickers

#6 Post by natgab » Mon Apr 28, 2014 1:49 pm

rkawakami wrote:I'd say you have two, unrelated problems:

- bad WiFi card; I'd recommended pulling it out of the system instead of relying on BIOS to turn it off. If there's a power issue with it, it could affect anything else that is driven from the same power controller. I don't know if the BIOS control will totally cut off power to the MiniPCI card so the safest thing to do is yank it out.
- bad inverter / LCD panel / lid switch / motherboard causing lack of display on the LCD. "Flickering" sounds like it could be a bad/weak inverter board OR a bad / marginal backlight inside the LCD panel. It could also be as simple as a stuck lid switch or loose cabling. If the display had a pink / reddish tint to it, I'd lean towards a bad backlight; that's basically fixed by replacing the entire panel. If it was bright white when it was last working, then make sure the lid switch is not pushed down into the case and check the seating of the LCD ribbon cable to the motherboard, the inverter board to the ribbon cable and the backlight plug to the inverter. All of those things cost no $$$, just some of your time to disassemble the system. If none of those things fixes the problem, the next thing to check would be the fuse on the motherboard that protects the inverter board. Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly which one to check at the moment. I may be able to determine that when I get home tonight. You would need a simple multimeter, good eyes and steady hands to measure the fuse. Assuming the fuse is okay, then that leaves the inverter and the LCD panel. Since an inverter board is cheaper than a LCD panel, swap out the inverter board with one that is known to work. You can find them for ~$10 to $20 on eBay or somebody here may have a spare. If a known good inverter doesn't light up the panel, then the problem is probably with the backlight.
---New install of Windows 7 on the Thinkpad X40 sort of solved the WIFi problem. It is still dead, but at least Win7 ignores it well enough. Seems to no longer give me the beeps, even though the card is still installed. I guess I will have to buy a new PCI card since I don't want to use up one of the two USBs.

---Bought a new inverter, followed the (great) IBM repair manual and replaced it on the X40. Powers up nice and bright! Loaded Windows 7 on it since it still had Win XP. Works well enough for light duty, I think just upgrading to a 5400RPM HDD would be enough and obviously a SSD would bring it back to like new perfonmace.

Thank you for the help.
Thinkpad X260 ( # 20F6-CTR1WW) 2.3HGz i3 6100u, 16GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm HD, Intel HD520, 1366x768 IPS
Thinkpad T43 - bkup | Thinkpad R50 - DOA | Thinkpad R61 - RIP | Thinkpad X40 - In Use

Post Reply
  • Similar Topics
    Replies
    Views
    Last post

Return to “ThinkPad X20/X30/X40 Series incl. Tablets”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 49 guests