T60 suddenly switches off, will not power on again, DVD drive related?

Question

I have searched and searched for this, and although finding many "T60 will not power up" I haven't 
found any with this twist.
My T60 is ~2 years old, and the problem just started recently. Working on battery one day, the laptop 
suddenly died - like instant loss of power. I could not turn it on again. One strange thing though: 
When I removed the battery and re-inserted it, the batt-icon-light came on briefly (a blink). If I then pushed the power button it lit up for 1 sec and then went out, not booting. Repeating it, without removing the battery, it didn't light up.Ok, thinking maybe the power supply was dead, I took it completely apart, removing also the harddrive and the DVD drive. By chance I then saw that it had "fixed itself". I resembled it and it worked again, powering up like nothing had happend.
Then it happened again yesterday. I read in here about the "push power 10 times, hold power down 30 sec" etc, but had no luck with that. Again, when I inserted the adapter cable the light came on (power plug + batt light) but when pushing the power button they went off, and if I removed and reinserted the plug same thing again.
I then read about removing HDD and DVD drive, and that did it! So, it happened again today and this time I just removed the DVD - and it booted again. 
So, after this loong description here I hope that some of you have tried/seen this before or have an idea what it can be. I left the DVD drive out, and it has not happened again...yet (it's been 5 hours only). 
Ideas?
Thanks in advance!
Martin.
Moderator edit: Removed duplicate copy of message text.

Answer 1

Kaz wrote:
Hi Nordal,
I know this is an old thread, but since I too am now experiencing inability to startup by T60 and seems to be getting worse in the last months, I was wondering what additional things you may have learned in the last 2 years since facing this issue.  My system will typically be in standby or hibernate and when I open lid to start it up again, Power and Bat light go out and cannot start it.  No beep codes, nothing.  Previously, recovery was to pull battery (which is now new Lenovo as of last month and working great), hit power button a few times and then hold it in, put battery back in and AC adapter, then it would start up.  In last few days, this no longer works.  I have to go through similar step, but now I have to startup only with battery, once in Desktop, I can plug in adapter and no issue until next time.  I have three 90W AC adapter all putting out correct 19.5-20 VDC.  Have rulled out an adapter issue, I believe.  Concerned about something on motherboard being flaky, but cannot pinpoint issue.  A few days ago when this happened, I had to pull CMOS battery, wait a few min., then put everything back together and was able to boot.
Have never pulled anything more than RAM, CMOS battery, main battery, and AC adapter.  May have to try DVD drive next time.
Thanks,
Kaz
It's probably best to start a new thread instead of reopening one thats 2-3years old, but from what your describing it sounds like your slowly ruling out everything except the system board, nothing you don't know already.
I don't normally deal with T60's, my main focus is T61, but I do have a source for the boards if you were to need one, as well as having a source to get the older boards reflowed. Some of the older models had problems with solder connections cracking when the board would flex, which can be repaired on an infrared reballing machine. My friend Dominic (realblackstuff from thinkpadforums.com) operates a website where boards are collected and sent off to be reflowed in wholesale lots. It's quite reasonably priced, as are the T60 boards pulled form grade "A" corporate laptops, but lets hope you can find a lesser component that is causing the problems.
ThinkPad W-510 i7-820QM(1.73-3.06GHz) Quad Core... ThinkPad T500, T9900, 8gb SSD...FrankNpad T-60p/61p (X9000 2.8ghz) 8gb SSD ips FlexView...ThinkPad T-61p (T9300 2.5ghz) 8gb ram...Thinkpad X-61 Tablet 4gb ram...ThinkPad A-31 (1.9ghz P4 1.5gb ram)