Thinkpad X13 won't boot - i can haz nerd help? Power?

[Celery Man 21101]

This is a not very old thinkpad x13 Gen2. This was a work computer - I was laid off, they shut off my access, I tried through multiple channels several times to return this computer, they don't care and it's been 4 months, so it's a grayish area where i feel justified having this nice PC laptop but I'm also not sure if I'll get help from Lenovo if I turn to them for support.

I did a full windows reinstall a month or so back to wipe it clear and start new, everything came back OK. But, very shortly after that (while i was connecting my logi mx master/mxkeys peripherals) it shut off suddenly (there were beeps, I can't remember what the pattern of beeps were) and hasn't turned on since. What it will do is light up the little red light on the outside, light up the status light next to the power button inside, it will turn on the backlight under the keys, and the fan will blow briefly. You can see all of that here - 

 

If I leave it plugged in, it will spend a while doing that cycle (light blinks, backlight turns on, fan blows, it turns off, it waits for a while, does it again) before it stops doing anything. Things I have tried are - using the little pinhole reset thing on the bottom, letting the battery drain down completely over a period of weeks and trying again, I've removed the back and taken out the battery and waited and then put the battery back and tried again. Nothing doing, and I think it is beyond my ability to troubleshoot from here. I would love to get this laptop working - any tips on next steps? Would be much appreciated.

[Dr Fear 1290]

DM this guy? Did you delete the recovery partition? There could be some corporate stuff lurking in there. My next step would probably be to try a different hard drive.

[Celery Man 21101]

That’s certainly something I’ve wondered - if there’s some corporate thing that bricked it. I really don’t think so for a couple different reasons, but I suppose it’s possible. Not a huge company, their IT was not competent, the computer remained completely accessible with all of the company data on it for months after I was let go even when it was connected to the internet, hell it didn’t complain when I connected a thumb drive to get some personal files off of it. But yeah one of my first thoughts woke be “remotely nuked” if I read this.

 

I did the most complete nuke everything and reinstall windows possible. It did come back online; I went through the new windows set up and created a user and was using it for an evening.

[Chips O'Toole 1442]

It won't POST, so I would highly doubt it is a drive issue.  If it was a corrupt boot partition or failed drive, it should POST.  I would say that means it is a problem with either power, video, motherboard, RAM or CPU.   Power or motherboard are the most common points of failure in my experience.

I would try taking the battery out and leaving it out, unplugging everything, and holding the power button down for like 30 seconds.  It's a dumb catch-all step for discharging the current in all the internal components.  Then plug it in but leave the battery out and try to power it on.  It should be able to power on without the battery.  If not, I suspect one of those 5 things has failed and it's up to you whether it's worth replacing components.

Also, if it's not very old, check the warranty, some companies buy extended warranties that would cover faulty hardware.  You might be able to get support if you called in and got a support rep who isn't that concerned about verifying your status with the company.

[Celery Man 21101]

8 minutes ago, Chips O'Toole said:

 

I would try taking the battery out and leaving it out, unplugging everything, and holding the power button down for like 30 seconds.  It's a dumb catch-all step for discharging the current in all the internal components.  Then plug it in but leave the battery out and try to power it on.  It should be able to power on without the battery.  If not, I suspect one of those 5 things has failed and it's up to you whether it's worth replacing components.

Yeah taking the battery out and trying to power it on was a step I was going to try. From the googling I’ve done I think it’s powering on and then shutting off maybe as a safeguard from some power problem? Or at least that was my running theory - I will try this, thank you for the help.

[Celery Man 21101]

3 hours ago, Chips O'Toole said:

It won't POST, so I would highly doubt it is a drive issue.  If it was a corrupt boot partition or failed drive, it should POST.  I would say that means it is a problem with either power, video, motherboard, RAM or CPU.   Power or motherboard are the most common points of failure in my experience.

I would try taking the battery out and leaving it out, unplugging everything, and holding the power button down for like 30 seconds.  It's a dumb catch-all step for discharging the current in all the internal components.  Then plug it in but leave the battery out and try to power it on.  It should be able to power on without the battery.  If not, I suspect one of those 5 things has failed and it's up to you whether it's worth replacing components.

Also, if it's not very old, check the warranty, some companies buy extended warranties that would cover faulty hardware.  You might be able to get support if you called in and got a support rep who isn't that concerned about verifying your status with the company.

 

Boom. Battery out, powers on. This hopefully indicates that a replacement battery would fix the problem, or do you think potentially there’s some kind of problem with the connection to the battery and it’s more complicated than just that?

[Chips O'Toole 1442]

4 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

 

Boom. Battery out, powers on. This hopefully indicates that a replacement battery would fix the problem, or do you think potentially there’s some kind of problem with the connection to the battery and it’s more complicated than just that?

New battery should fix it!  Now just try and avoid shitty refurb batteries from China off Amazon.  Ordering from Lenovo is the safe bet, it's hard to tell what you are getting with Amazon. 

[thunderlounge 8459]

Replacement battery should do it. While it’s possible for it to be wiring, it’s not plausible.

Dig around google for something like thinkpad doesn’t boot unless battery is removed, etc.

With your results, I would suspect the battery. Whether it’s varying current or whatever. 

[Celery Man 21101]

Awesome, thanks y'all. I'm mad that I didn't refresh my ancient iphone before they laid me off (and explicitly allowed me to keep the phone), I had just refreshed my laptop this year and would be pissed if I had a bricked $1500 laptop just sitting under my desk.

[shakahorn 1660]

Google ‘Lenovo warranty check’ and the resultant page will tell you what kind of warrant, if any, is still on it.  If you have a warranty, call it in.  They won’t GAF who the true owner is.

[Celery Man 21101]

Found my way to the warranty page, it still has two years left but coverage for the battery just expired. The annoying thing is that it seems that they don’t sell batteries for this model either on the Lenovo site or Lenovo.encompass.com (or at least they don’t currently have them in stock). Seeing if I can get any guidance from Lenovo or I guess I’ll just have to try my luck on ifixit or Amazon or whatever.

[Chips O'Toole 1442]

 

22 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Found my way to the warranty page, it still has two years left but coverage for the battery just expired. The annoying thing is that it seems that they don’t sell batteries for this model either on the Lenovo site or Lenovo.encompass.com (or at least they don’t currently have them in stock). Seeing if I can get any guidance from Lenovo or I guess I’ll just have to try my luck on ifixit or Amazon or whatever.

 

Might be worth calling anyway to see if they recommend a 3rd party site for that battery. 

[atomheartbevo 90669]

3 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Found my way to the warranty page, it still has two years left but coverage for the battery just expired. The annoying thing is that it seems that they don’t sell batteries for this model either on the Lenovo site or Lenovo.encompass.com (or at least they don’t currently have them in stock). Seeing if I can get any guidance from Lenovo or I guess I’ll just have to try my luck on ifixit or Amazon or whatever.

If you have a reddit account, ask or search here, they will help you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/

I don't have access to the internal ThinkPad support stuff like I used to, but you should still be able to run down the FRU and find something on eBay, but as others have said, be careful, lots of people will rip you off.