T60 exhibiting 1 long and 2 short beep and black screen

Question

Hello all,
 i own a thinkpad t60 with ATI radeon x1300 graphics card. I read through your complete "T61p exhibiting 1 long and 2 short beep and black screen" thread and I have the same beep problem with my t60. Let me briefly explain you how the beeps occur in my system:
My t60 had this problem after I initally formatted my system and this 1 long and 2 short beeps used started occuring. But the strangest fact is that after those beeps and blank screen, the power light in the indicator light group is on along with battery and ac power lights. But then when I repeatedly switched on and off the system, the sequence of beeps dont occur all the time. Then I completely switched off the system and when I booted the next times I started pressing the ESC keys after pressing the on button. Most of the times ( 8 out of 10 times), the first 4 times it produced the same beep codes but after the 5th time, the system turns on.  All those 5 times, I kept on pressing the ESC key once I powered on the system.
Also, every time I'd a chance I did run the pc doctor to find any pro blem with the board or video card, but every time it turned out to be fine. So now,every time I turn my system off or use a stanby/hibernate whichever turns the screeen off, on immediate reboot it comes out blank but with the power indicator light on.
Here by I also list any changes that I'd made:
1. I reformatted the system and only then this started to occur.
2. after reformatting lsat time, I forgot to change the boot sequence but now I;d fixed that by pressing F9 under startup in bios.
3. I'd also once replaced my RAM with a different one (have 4gb now, but I suppose t60 can support a max of 3gb). WIll this be a problem?
4. And in the recent times due to the ati3duag.dll BSOD has occured. Any idea what this error might be due to?
5. Due to all these uncertainities, I havent updated tot he latest ATI driver which is 8.593 * and I still have the 8.293* . Will updating to the new one be a problem?
I appreciate any help or guidance you can give me in this matter and I badly need to fix it for my projects.
Thanks
Vishak

Answer 1

I think your best way of diagnosing this is to remove the new ram and install only one chip, if the problem persists, try the other. If the problem persists, then I'd try booting from a Linux LiveCD (any will do but I'd recommend ubuntu.com). boot with the option to not change anything on your PC. If you get this same problem when booting linux, then you know it's a hardware problem, in which case I'd remove as much hardware as possible, drives, cards, etc... if it still persists, then you most likely have a bad system board. In this unfortunate event your best option would be a used one. A new one would cost more then the laptop is worth, but used T60 boards are pretty reasonable, I just found one for another member and could probably help you find one to if necessary, but lets hope it's just a ram chip. And by the way, your system is limited to 3GB, but in the chipset, and in your 32bit OS they came installed with. You can install 4GB, but it won't be able to use it all.
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