In this guide I explain how to replace the cooling fan assembly in an IBMÂ ThinkPad T43 laptop. This laptop was starting up with a “Fan error” message indicating the cooling fan failure. The fan is a part of the heat sink assembly and when the fan fails, the whole cooling assembly has to be replaced.
Also you can use this guide for removing and replacing the keyboard and hidden memory module.
In this post I explain how to replace a noisy or failed cooling fan in a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 laptop.
This guide might work for some other Lenovo ThinkPad models. If it works for you, please mention the laptop model number in the comments after the post.
The cooling fan is a part of the heat sink assembly. If the cooling fan fails, the whole heat sink assembly has to be replaced.
It’s possible that you can separate the fan from the heat sink and replace it separately, but in this guide I’m replacing the whole assembly.
Let’s remove the cooling fan assembly and replace it with a new one.
Today I will be removing and replacing the LCD screen in an IBM ThinkPad T43p laptop. You can use same set of instructions for ThinkPad T43 and some other IBM (now Lenovo) laptops.
Failure description: the laptop starts with a reddish screen (white color appear to be pink). After a minute or two the backlight goes completely off but you still can see a very faint image on the screen if you look very closely. When you restart the laptop, the screen lights up again but a minute later the light goes off.
Solution: the laptop has a failing backlight lamp which is a part of the LCD screen. The whole screen has to be replaced.
You can try replacing just the backlight lamp without replacing the screen, but it’s not easy and should be done only by an experienced technician.
In this guide I explain how to remove the keyboard and replace the launch board (aka button board) in a Lenovo 3000 laptop. As an example I took a Lenovo 3000 v200 laptop but I believe the disassembly steps will be the same or very similar for all models in the 3000 line. If my instructions work for you please mention the laptop model in the comments below.
The launch board is a board with the power and volume control buttons located under the keyboard bezel. I’m replacing the launch board because one of the volume control buttons got stuck in the pressed position and because of that the volume is set to maximum all the time. When I try turning it down, the volume slider goes up by itself. Cleaning the button with alcohol and contact cleaner didn’t help and I decided to replace the board.
This guide explains how to remove a broken LCD screen from a Lenovo X60s laptop and replace it with a new LCD screen. The display disassembly procedure will work for some other IBM ThinkPad and Lenovo laptops. If this guide works for your laptop, please mention the model in the comments.
Before you start, please turn off the laptop, unplug the AC adapter and remove the battery.
Using this guide you’ll be able to replace or upgrade memory modules (aka RAM) in IBM ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p series laptops. In my case I’ll be working with a ThinkPad T41.
This laptop came with 512MB RAM installed. There are two 256MB memory modules installed. One of them can be easily accessed from the bottom of the laptop. The second module is hidden under the keyboard.
This guide explains how to add more RAM memory into a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p series laptop. Are you trying to upgrade laptop memory but cannot find RAM slots on the bottom of the laptop? In this model both slots are hidden under the touch pad. In order to access both memory slots, you’ll have to remove the palm rest.
The palm rest removal procedure could be found in the official ThinkPad Hardware Maintenance Manual. There are three different manuals for laptops with different LCD size. Choose the right one for your laptop. After that go to the “Removing and replacing a FRU” chapter and read instructions for removing the palm rest.
In this guide I explain how to remove and replace the keyboard on an IBM ThinkPad T30 laptop. This guide should work for many other IBM ThinkPad laptops because they all have similar cases.
You can easily remove and replace the keyboard at home without taking your laptop to a repair shop.
First of all, turn off the laptop, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery.
Here are instructions for replacing screen inverter in IBM ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p series laptops. All these models are identical and share the same disassembly steps.
What is the screen inverter in a laptop computer? Why would you want to replace the inverter?
The screen inverter is a small circuit board witch is located inside the laptop display panel, you’ll find it below the LCD screen. The screen inverter provides high voltage AC power for the backlight bulb (CCFL) and because of that the image on the screen is bright. If the inverter board fails, the LCD screen remains dark after the laptop is turned on and the image on the screen is very dark, almost invisible. You still should see the image on the screen under a bright light but without backlight the laptop is unusable.
Let’s say you have an IBM ThinkPad laptop and when you turn it on all you get is a black screen with “Fan error” message. What could be wrong?
A few weeks ago, the fan in my trusty IBM T42 bought the farm. This resulted in the unit heating up considerably, as well as numerous “fan error” messages on bootup. It eventually became so bad that to boot up at all, I had to blow compressed air into the fan’s exhaust grill for 5-10 seconds, in order to fool the BIOS and make it believe the fan was actually spinning.
According to the IBM hardware maintenance guide (HMM) for ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p this error message indicates a problem with the fan, you can find symptom-to-FRU index on the page58.
The symptom-to-FRU index in this section lists symptoms and errors and their possible causes.
Apparently it’s time to replace the fan assembly. The cooling fan comes together with the heat sink, that’s why you’ll have to replace the whole fan assembly.
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