IBM T43 Intermittent startup failure. Sometimes starts fine. Sometimes goes dead straight off. Sometimes 1 beep then off.

[DaWozzMan]

IBM T43 Intermittent startup failure

Just recently my T43 would completely fail to start. The battery light would be on with the power supply plugged in. I would press the power on button and the battery LED would go off and that would be it.
Then I unplugged the PS and battery and reattached both and tried again and it started up just fine. I closed the lid and put it in sleep mode. When I lifted the lid again instead of waking up it died straight away. No lights on at all and I had to remove the battery and retry several times.

It has gotten worse and I had to take the battery in and out several times to get anything out of it. After reading some forums I turned it on by holding down the power on button. The LEDS all flashed, fan went on, it beeped once and then it went off again. After a few more attempts I got it to start up again normally. Please help!

The battery is old and needs replacing. I have ordered one on eBay and it will be here in a week or two. The power adaptor is a bit used as well. The cable just behind where I plug it into the laptop was frayed and repaired twice.

 

[jaguarskx]

Unfortunately, the laptop is rather old, thus it's not surprising it is failing. It might be a motherboard issue that is causing the problem, but diagnosing it and getting it replaced will cost more money than it is worth. I really recommend you backup any data you have and replace your aging ThinkPad with something more modern. You should be able to find plenty of laptops for $500 or less at Newegg.com.

I have an older ThinkPad T40, other than the fact that the CMOS battery is basically dead, it still operates fine. Then again I hard use it anymore. I suppose I can replace the CMOS battery for around $15 - $20 so that I no longer have very long boot times (due to the mostly dead CMOS battery), but as I said I hardly use anymore.