T500 - Intermittent Boot Hang And Not Able To Reboot

Hey folks. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T500 (2242-35U) here that is having a bit of trouble.

First off, its very intermittent to get it to boot. When I press the power button to start it, it goes through its regular post, and then right before it should start booting off of the hard drive or dvd drive, it hangs with just the blinking cursor. Trying different boot media like a hard drive, bootable cd/dvd disk or even a bootable usb stick all result in the same.

However, once every 5-6 times, I get lucky and it starts to boot. Once I was finally able to boot off of a bootable diagnostic cd, I ran hardware checks, and it appears that everything checks out.

Another issue with it is that it doesn't do a reboot properly. No matter if i'm into the operating system doing a Restart option, or at the boot hang mentioned above, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete, the screen goes blank and it stays there until I forcefully power off and power back on. Even during my install of the operating system, when the setup reboots several times, i've had to forcefully power it off, and then try numerous times to get it to boot back up again.

I just installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 x86 enterprise, and updated the bios to its latest version, doesn't appear to change anything.

The unit is currently out of warranty. Is there anything else I can try with this? I am an authorized service provider for Lenovo, I just don't know where to go to from here, and any suggestions would be welcome.

Thank you.

 

Welcome to Computer Help Forums, Kary!

I'm absolutely no help with computer problems unfortunately - so have just popped in to say hi and reassure you that one of our Experts will be here as quickly as possible.

Although I can't help, am really interested in both your post and what steps can be taken to put the Think Pad back to running perfectly. (I know someone who has asked 'Santa' for one this year ).

Do hope you feel comfortable here, whether it's in any of our various computer sections or in our social area - and again, a happy welcome to you, Kary!

Mara

 

Because you are an authorized service provider I am going to resist the temptation to ask you the basics about safemode, dskchk, memory tests and compatibility with the new OS. I am no expert on hardware matters but it really does seem to me that the issue lies there.

We have a number of members who will have greater insight than I, but, since everything seems to work intermittently I would look closely at the MOBO and the RAM.

 

The fact that it shows the blinking cursor, means that the system is looking for something that was there but now isnt, this often happens when a BIOS is resst and everything defaults such as the boot device order...
Check that the HDD is listed as the first boot device and that the others are disabled then SAVE and EXIT the BIOS