Problems IBM Thinkpad A30 Type 2652, displays garbage

[Geir Eivind Mork]

My dear old 1ghz Thinkpad a30 could live a fine life in the hands of my
girlfriend for her at-work-surfing (she works in a video store in the
weekends) - but instead it's collecting dust in my drawer due to a
strange error.

The Error occurs both on the screen and on the external screen - and the
time before i suddenly couldn't boot I experienced pink lines on
randomly on everything on the screen, and each second line in the videos
beeing gone. So something tells me it's my gpu that is fubar.

This is a cellphone photo of it (have no real digicam, I'm sorry)

http://geir.eivind.mork.no/images/thinkpad.jpg

Anyone have,
1. Any idea on why it is this way?
2. Any idea on how to fix it?

Since the laptops warranty is lone gone, sending it to IBM to fix it
sounds fairly expensive. So if the only solution is to find some poor
a30 with the right parts intact to destroy in the name of resurrecting
one in working order - do anyone have one to spare?

 

[Eric H]

My dear old 1ghz Thinkpad a30 could live a fine life in the hands of my
girlfriend for her at-work-surfing (she works in a video store in the
weekends) - but instead it's collecting dust in my drawer due to a strange
error.

The Error occurs both on the screen and on the external screen - and the
time before i suddenly couldn't boot I experienced pink lines on randomly
on everything on the screen, and each second line in the videos beeing
gone. So something tells me it's my gpu that is fubar.

This is a cellphone photo of it (have no real digicam, I'm sorry)

http://geir.eivind.mork.no/images/thinkpad.jpg

Anyone have,
1. Any idea on why it is this way?
2. Any idea on how to fix it?

Since the laptops warranty is lone gone, sending it to IBM to fix it
sounds fairly expensive. So if the only solution is to find some poor a30
with the right parts intact to destroy in the name of resurrecting one in
working order - do anyone have one to spare?

First make sure there is no disc in the CD slot when you power up or floppy
disk in the drive if it has one
When you power up and the logo appears is the writing correct.

Otherwise looks to me like a corrupt boot sector maybe caused by a virus..
Maybe you will need to FDISK & reformat then reinstall the OS.

 

[cctom123]

YES! Finally somebody with the same problem!

I have the same laptop, IBM A30 2652 and since 3 years, I have the same problem. It has definetly nothing to do with a cdrom ar the harddisk, it is from the very beginning when the bios loads.

I have always had a feeling I have this problem since I tried once to install Fedora Linux on that portable. When initializing the graphical desktop, it started.

When I install windows 2000, everything works fine except watching video's because than I have those stupid purple lines.

When I try to install Windows XP, I oly get a resolution of 640x480, no chance when installing the correct display drivers...

Also the garbage when booting up or in the bios or in DOS... all the same as in your pic :-(

Also, when I boot the PC and as long as the bios is loading, I can change behaviour of the display by forcing and "twisting" the screen a bit, as if there is a bad contact. I also dissasambled en reassambled my whole portable, checked connectors and so on... but never had any luck.

Somebody else any clues?