Comments | spot: Voodoo computer repair

spot

Voodoo computer repair

Sep 08, 2009 10:18

Yesterday, my new Thinkpad T500 managed to get water spilled on it. It promptly powered down and steadfastly refused to power up. I dried it off, inside and out, then tented it in front of a box fan for a few hours, but it still refused to turn on ( Read more... )

Comments 10

at a guess... adamwill September 8 2009, 17:28:27 UTC

...i'd say it resets the BIOS. desktop motherboards usually have a switch somewhere which does this, but obviously it'd be trickier to do it that way on a laptop. still odd, though!

Re: at a guess... spot September 8 2009, 17:30:45 UTC

Maybe, but the machine wasn't powering on at all before. No lights, no noise, nada.

A physical bios reset based on timing is believable, but with no power going to the switch?

Re: at a guess... popskeeter September 8 2009, 19:04:29 UTC

There is likely a secondary power source, such as a CMOS battery.

Re: at a guess... adamwill September 8 2009, 21:47:35 UTC

you pressing the button 10 times might generate enough power ;-)

Same here anonymous September 8 2009, 23:01:04 UTC

When my T61 went kaput, I called tech support they told me to do the same thing. I thought it was a joke. But after 2 tries at this (maybe 3) it never came back to life. The guy finally told me to send it in.

-Mauriat

katzj September 9 2009, 01:13:18 UTC

Bizarre.

Of course, given that it's the case, you should have found the answer yourself in the Lenovo tech docs :-)

Static electricity discharge ... anonymous September 9 2009, 01:31:57 UTC

The same thing happened to my wife's laptop; we work for IBM, and I called the internal Lenovo helpdesk, and they told me that this was the method for discharging static electricity. I have no idea if that makes any sense at all.

unhipster September 9 2009, 04:11:39 UTC

Did you have to do a little dance?