So the warranty ran out on my expensive Lenovo X-61 notebook, (about $1600 a year ago), to which I had added an extra 2 gigs of ram, and a 128 gig solid state hard drive - another $600 or so.
Warranty died on 12/29/2008. Today, 1/5/09, I turned on the machine and it’s bricked. The battery light comes on, and the power light is on when I plug in the adapter, but pressing the power button does nothing. No flicker from the hard drive light or any other light. Dead as a doornail.
I have to have a portable of some kind, so I ran out to Costco and bought an HP Mini 1033CL with XP, which will at least let me get on the web, access my stock charting program, run Quicken, and let me play Pretty Good Solitaire, and can handle EVDO via a USB thingy - all the requirements for a balanced (tech) diet.
It’s actually not a bad little machine for a bit less than $500 bucks. I may never buy a full-featured notebook again.
But…six days after the warranty expires???!!!
Bastards.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
I’ve been using the new HP Mini 1033CL for most of the morning now, and I have to say I’m impressed. For my minimal needs, I can only think of a couple of possible improvements - built in Bluetooth, so that one of the USB ports isn’t dedicated to the wireless mouse - (and for transfer of files between phone and ‘puter) and a better built-in webcam. This 1.3mp stuff doesn’t really cut it any more.
OTOH, I’m about to order a new Samsung Omnia phone, which has a 5.0mp camera - and Bluetooth, which would make for an easy file transfer, if the HP Mini had Bluetooth…
Since I’m not a fanatic mp3 collector, and I don’t do a lot of video/mpeg editing, and since I’ve shifted my professional writing work to Google Docs, (as well as my email to Googlemail, my calendar to GoogleCalendar, etc., etc., about the only things I have installed on the Mini are Quicken and the Solitaire program - and my downloader software for the Sony E-Book.
I haven’t deliberately run the battery down under normal use yet, so I can’t comment on real-world battery life, but otherwise, for 2.4 pounds and under $500, the HP Mini is one heck of a deal.
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Any chance of transferring the RAM and SSHD?
If you haven’t already, try pulling all power of any kind. This means disconnect the adapter, the battery, everything that provides juice. Leave it alone for at least 30 minutes, then plug it all back in and try to boot it up.
Sometimes going completely cold can snap a laptop out of transient ACPI/BIOS problems that would otherwise make it appear dead. I revived a friend’s “bricked” laptop this way just a few months ago.
You might also try popping out the battery, and just running on ac. Saw a laptop once that refused to do anything as long as the battery was in.
Tried that, and tried it with a couple of different batteries. Gonna give martinra’s suggestion a shot now.
Poke around here.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff there.
Well, unfortunately martinra’s suggestion didn’t raise it from the dead. Thanks, Bashir, I’m looking at your link now.
Well, the Lenovo service center didn’t offer much, either. After patiently searching down all the references to my problem, the answer seemed to be “Send the machine to be serviced.”
Sigh. I’ll probably do that, but lord knows what that will cost.
Laptops are the only thing I purchase extended warranties for, and I’ve used them every time.
I picked up a MSI Wind on sale for 300 bucks as a work expense, and I really like it.
After patiently searching down all the references to my problem, the answer seemed to be “Send the machine to be serviced.”
If you’re confident enough to attempt to open it up, what about removing the internal CMOS battery for a short interval and allowing the laptop to go absolutely, completely powerless before trying another reboot?
Sure, it’s not like you have a warranty to void at this point…
Good thought. I used to do that to bring back motherboards back when I was overclocking desktops.
I repair laptops for a local shop. Practically any hardware issue can cause a laptop to behave this way–I recommend removing every part you can operate the system without. Battery, wifi card, ram (you can replace it with the ram from your netbook), optical drive, ssd hard drive, modem. Take it all out. After it’s all said and done and it does the same thing, hook it up to an external monitor and switch to external (using fn f7 on ibms usually) to see if you’re getting any video. If you do all this and it still doesn’t post, probably a motherboard issue.
Beep codes:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Error_Codes_and_Beep_Codes
Disassembly guide:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/42×3550_04.pdf
Correct link:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/42×3550_04.pdf
Still doesn’t work. Just replace the last x in the link with a real lowercase x.
Here ya go.
If you bought that Lenovo with any type of “platinum” Visa or Mastercard, chances are your warranty is automatically extended for a year. Check your user agreement. I took advantage of the Visa program a few years back when an H-P desktop failed 366 days after I bought it…
If it’s a hard drive problem try Spinrite. It can raise the dead.
http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
Also don’t forget the “I have a popular blog where I like to post about my experience with my expensive Lenovo laptop” extended warranty.
On an Instalanched post, no less…
Alfred, could you email me? I need some url corrections done on my Wikipedia entry….
richard10934, Spinrite can work miracles, but AFAIK not on solid-state hard drives.
Bill, is iceberg-at-iw3p-dot-com still valid?
alfredcentauri-at-bellsouth-dot-net