Question Thinkpad L560 Died - No power light, no sign of life

gdeangel

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Sep 7, 2012
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I took my Thinkpad L560 on the road over the holiday and when I got home yesterday, it died. Took it out of the bag, had it up and running fine for about 30 minutes, then picked it up by the back right corner (where power button is) and screen just went blank, and the green LED that usually shows by the side power port also went out. I tested the power supply with a multimeter and it appears to still have 20V.

While traveling the machine was "shut down", but when I took it out of the bag at home yesterday I noticed it was a little warm. It also had been dropped a few days earlier from a height of less than 2 ft onto a carpet while packing in its case, but had shown no signs of trouble except normal issues with WIFI connectivity/driver problems and "Ubuntu experienced an error" stuff that it constantly has had over its entire life.

Based on what I've read, I removed battery and tried to "drain" the machine by holding the power button for 30 seconds. Also tried removing the coin-cell battery and then reinstalling. No sign of life. I suppose the most suspect thing would be the system board, which has an accelerometer that the HMM says can "be damaged by a moderate fall". I'm glad Lenovo is protecting my hard drive with this accelerometer, but if the price is to lose the system board and the entire machine, well... kinda seems dumb.

I removed the keyboard and the palm rests to inspect the power button area for damage. One of the screw posts that hold the cover on was cracked (possibly from the fall?) but the boards and cabling in that area appear to be intact. It wasn't exactly apparent how to test whether the power button was working or not. As I said, however, the "AC Power Status Indicator" (the green/amber LED on the side by the power plug) is off and shows no signs of even a flicker.

Anyone have thoughts or insights onto possible repair... or also I am thinking of picking up a cheap "no OS/No HDD" L560 used online and trying to drop in the hard drive. It's a dual boot machine where I mainly use Ubuntu but so sometimes use windows when I need excel.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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gdeangel

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Sep 7, 2012
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Just gonna give a little update - check the voltage on the button cell battery per the HMM and it was fine. Same for the votage on the main battery (terminals 1 vs 7). Also check the voltage at on the board where the DC cabling attaches and it read 20 black-to-red.

What would be helpful is any insight into whether or not the issue could be the FRU called the "power button card". Everything I've obsreved suggest a system board failure EXCEPT for the fact that the immediate event that precipitated the failure of the machine was picking it up by the back corner where the power button is. No idea how to test it short of replacing from a donor, but would hate to waste time doing that.

As before, andy and all insights appreciated.