HMM will provide you instructions for troubleshooting, diagnostics, removal and replacement laptop hardware. All IBM HMMs are publicly available. You can find HMM for your laptop on the IBM website or you can follow the link below. All HMMs are in pdf format, so you can download them and use at your convenience. For hardware replacement instructions find “Removing and replacing a FRU” chapter.
IBM ThinkPad Computer Hardware Maintenance Manuals Year 2001-2006
IBM ThinkPad A2*m, A2*p
IBM ThinkPad A2*e
IBM ThinkPad A21e
IBM ThinkPad A22* (Wireless models)
IBM ThinkPad A30, A30p, A31, A31p
IBM ThinkPad G40, G41
IBM ThinkPad R30, R31
IBM ThinkPad R32
IBM ThinkPad R40, R40e
IBM ThinkPad R50/p, R51
IBM ThinkPad R50e, R51e, R52
IBM ThinkPad R60, R60e
IBM ThinkPad T20, T21, T22, T23
IBM ThinkPad T30
IBM ThinkPad T40/p, T41/p, T42/p
IBM ThinkPad T43
IBM ThinkPad T43/p
IBM ThinkPad T60, T60p
IBM ThinkPad X20, X21, X22, X23, X24
IBM ThinkPad X30, X31, X32
IBM ThinkPad X40
IBM ThinkPad X41
IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet
IBM ThinkPad X60/s
IBM ThinkPad Z60m
IBM ThinkPad Z60t
IBM ThinkPad Z61e, Z61m
IBM ThinkPad Z61t
IBM ThinkPad Computer Hardware Maintenance Manuals Year 1997-2001
TransNote
i Series 1200, 1300, ThinkPad 130
i Series 1400, 1500
i Series 1400, 1500
IBM ThinkPad 240
IBM ThinkPad 240X
IBM ThinkPad 380, 385, 560, 760, 765
IBM ThinkPad 380XD/385XD
IBM ThinkPad 380Z
IBM ThinkPad 390
IBM ThinkPad 390E
IBM ThinkPad 390X
IBM ThinkPad 560X
IBM ThinkPad 560Z
IBM ThinkPad 570/E
IBM ThinkPad 600
IBM ThinkPad 600X
IBM ThinkPad 770
Get IBM laptop manuals here: IBM ThinkPad notebooks hardware maintenance manuals.
1. Select product type.
2. Select series.
3. Select subseries/model.
4. Click on “Go” button.
5. Click on “Manuals” tab on the top of the page.
6. Click on “Hardware maintenance manuals” link on the left.
7. Download hardware maintenance manual.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
IBM ThinkPad maintenance manuals
Friday, August 18, 2006
Fixing bad video on LCD screen
Here I’m going to post some laptop screen photos showing bad video output. I’ll explain what was wrong with the screen and how I fixed it. I plan to ad more examples as soon as I get new pictures. If you have your own example (and know how to fix it) please let me know and I’ll post it too.
Example 1.
Here’s a picture of Satellite M55 LCD screen I made this morning. I got this video output as soon as I started the laptop. There were a lot of vertical lines, and they were changing color without any pattern. To me it looked like Northern Lights (never seen in real life) :). The external monitor worked fine.
As soon as I applied some tension to the screen it changed the pattern. Some horizontal lines appeared in the middle of the LCD.
Here’s the difference. When I torque the screen, the image appears but it’s distorted with some horizontal lines running across the screen.
Reseating the video cable didn’t make any change and the problem was fixed after I replaced the LCD screen.
Example 2.
I took this picture from Toshiba Satellite M65. I think that this example is very typical. One day you wake up, turn on the laptop and see one or a few hair-like vertical lines in different colors.
When you move the LCD screen some lines might disappear or more lines appear on the screen. A video output on an external screen would be perfect, without any lines. Unfortunately, these lines indicate a screen problem. I’ve never seen this kind of video output caused by a bad video cable or bad FL inverter board. My laptop was fixed after I replaced the LCD screen.
Example 3.
The photo below comes from Toshiba Satellite 5205. The laptop displays identical vertical lines all over the LCD screen as soon as I turn it on. Sometimes these lines are red, sometimes they are blue, sometimes they become wider and change color to white.
The same pattern appears on the external monitor. It displays same vertical lines. When the same video defect appears on both monitors – internal LCD screen and external screen, then most likely it happens because of a bad video card. On some laptops the video card is integrated into the system board, on other models it’s a separate module.
In this example, the vertical lines were caused by a failed video memory on the system board. I’ve tested the video memory with Microscope utility and it failed the test. In Toshiba Satellite 5205 the video memory is integrated into the system board. To fix the problem, I’ll have to replace the board. (We do not have equipment to replace the memory module itself).
Example 4.
Here’s another example of a bad LCD screen. My bad! It wasn’t the LCD screen problem.
As soon as I turned on the laptop, I was getting these reddish marks on the LCD screen but not on the external monitor. Reseating and replacing the video cable didn’t help. The problem disappeared when I installed my test LCD screen. Yes, for some reason I wasn’t able to reproduce the problem on my test LCD screen. But the reddish video appeared again as soon as I replaced the screen. I guess it happened because the system board had some kind of intermittent problem with onboard video or video connector. Long story short, I had to replace the system board and it fixed the problem. Yep, I misdiagnosed this laptop.
Example 5.
Here’s one more example of a faulty LCD screen. The left half of the screen works just fine but the right side is completely white.
Example 6.
Here’s another laptop with a bad LCD screen. This time it’s a tablet PC.
Example 7.
This screen looks like the screen on the example 1. I hooked up an external monitor and the external video works perfectly fine.
Here’s the difference. When I torque the screen, the image appears but it’s distorted with some horizontal lines running across the screen.
After a few seconds the image washes away.
I had to replace the LCD screen.
Example 8.
This laptop displays inverted colors right from the startup. As you see, the Toshiba logo is light green instead of red. The background is light gray instead of black. The Intel logo should be blue on a white background but it is red on a black background.
When your laptop displays inverted colors as on the picture above, this is an indication of a bad screen. You’ll have to replace the screen.
Example 9.
Here are two more screens. In both cases this problem is related to the LCD screen, witch means the screen has to be replaced.
On the image below you see a white band running from the top of the screen to the bottom. This band appears right from the laptop startup and runs through the logo too.
On the following image only the left side of the screen is working properly. This problem is caused by faulty LCD screen.
Other post related to troubleshooting laptop video problems:
How to troubleshoot and fix laptop video problems
Taking apart notebook LCD screen
Replacing LCD screen inverter
The newly installed screen is not working