⟐ Answered October 13, 2025 at 3:51 MST

⟐ Commented October 28, 2020 at 12:59 MST

⟐ Answered August 13, 2016 at 8:34 MST

⟐ Answered December 16, 2015 at 23:55 MST

Notebook used for just normal day to day activities. No Gaming, extra gadgets.

Has run into completely non-bootable state.

Normal boot: Every single time, dumps blue screen but with different error codes. Also, after dumping, hangs in the blue screen itself. Can restart only with hard press of power button.

Enter BIOS setup- using F12 doesn’t work most of the time. Often, System hangs at Lenovo Splash screen. When it goes into boot menu, can change values, but Save & Exit always hangs.

Sometimes: Occasionally, on hard restart, a message ‘system is being repaired’ comes just below Lenovo icon on the splash screen. Shows additional screen with options. Entering any options (recovery, reset, restore last good recovery point etc) always ends up in one more blue screen.

One key recovery: Following happens with each of these options:

1. Normal Start up —> Dumps blue screen always
2. Boot Menu —> Can enter, change values (e.g disable Fast Boot etc), but exiting with Save - F10 - always hangs.
3. Boot Options —> Shows boot from hard disk & boot from USB options. Booting from HDD always dumps blue screen. Booting from recovery media (tried with both media created from Microsoft website as well as one bought from Lenovo service). But always hangs or shows blue screen .
4. Recover system —> Always hangs. Hard restart is the only option.

Flashing keyboard: for past couple of days, most of the times I try to boot directly or thru one key recovery, screen stays blank, but keyboard lights keep flashing. Hard press restart is the only option.

⟐ Answered May 11, 2019 at 11:06 MST

⟐ Commented January 12, 2019 at 7:37 MST

⟐ Answered March 29, 2016 at 11:11 MST

⟐ Answer edited March 19, 2022 at 7:28 MST

Symptoms:

1. Battery charging appears to work. Charging it with the adapter exhibits the correct LED behavior over time for empty, charging, and full.
2. Pressing the power button lights up the power LED and lights up the keyboard. After about 3 seconds, the keyboard LED turns off but the CPU fan keeps spinning. Nothing appears on the screen.
3. Identical behavior for #2 if I press the special BIOS button next tot he power button.
4. The screen appears to be working correctly (see: “After installing the new motherboard“ below)

What I tried:

1. I tested the battery with my basic understanding with a multimeter and got a proper voltage out of it. All above symptoms are the same with just battery and no AC connected. Behavior is the same if I also disconnect the battery and only connect to AC.
2. I tested the motherboard with a multimeter. I don’t know very much about electronics, but from very rough research it looks like all the components are getting their proper voltage, I checked the fan, keyboard, and usb ports.
3. I purchased a replacement motherboard off ebay. This is where things got weird:

After installing the new motherboard:

1. The screen came on and showed the Lenovo logo with the test “Checking new devices” and then proceeded to shut back off and exhibit the same original symptoms.
2. One time while experimenting, it showed lenovo boot up screen followed by a windows BSOD. I was never able to get it to do anything else after that.
3. I thought since I couldn;t get to the BIOS that I could remove the harddrive and leave in a bootable SD card for an unbuntu install connected to force it to have boot priority. This did not work… but after leaving the laptop plugged in over night it was attempting to install ubuntu when I woke up the next morning! It was stuck at 38% of checking the SD-card content and never continued. I havent been able to get it to do that again.

What should I check next? Surely even if everything was disconnected except for the keyboard and monitor the device SHOULD boot into BIOS right?? Suggestions and guidance welcome, this is my first time attempting to repair electronics at this level.

New Developments:

SO I have figured out that when the laptop is completely off-power (ac and battery both disconnected) for at least a minute (maybe 30 seconds?) it resets something internally that allows it to try booting again.

From this I am able to try a whole new host of things for more data:

1. Booting into windows actually works. But either at the login screen or within seconds of logging in it BSODS.
2. I am able to access the bios
3. Automatic recovery from the Novo key fails with a BSOD
4. With the ability to boot from USB I have tried running ubuntu: it boots up but then freezes at some point during the launch and becomes unrespsonsive
5. I also tried booting memtest86, which gets past the introductory scan, counts down to start the test, and then black screen unresponsive.
6. Booting into windows SAFE mode ACTUALLY SEEMS TO WORK, or at elast doesnt bsod immediately…. my main problem is i dont rememebr the password for that account so i cant actually login (safe-mode disables the PIN login)
7. I also took out the harddrive and loaded it into my desktop PC and scanned it and got full SMART green across the board.
8. I’ve done all of the above both on AC power only and on only battery power. Which to me rules out issues with either.

At this point it seems like the motherboard (and probably the old motherboard as well) as well as the hard drive and power are all fine. Could it be faulty RAM at this point?

I finally got memtest86+ to run

With Memtest86 failing (logs show it entering a graphical mode before it quits, I was able to get the old memtest86+ to run by disabling UEFI in the bios and yanking the harddrive. I very quickly started gettign errors. Up to 2million errors ocurred before i stopped the test:

Now the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, and this is a new motherboard, so I’m definitely at a loss now. Temperature-based???

Update

So the next test was keeping the cooler cold:

When I did this, it booted into windows and stayed stable and running for several minutes. When I removed the fan and ice, the system crashed within a minute.

Heat issues would explain the random BSODs from missed memory timings and hardware failures that always come after a somewhat set period of time. The time to crash also shortens the longer I sit there continuously trying it.

The CPU fan slowly weakening and burning out would also explain the slow decline I experienced with the laptop when I initially started having problems, which was increasingly common bsods. This ultimately likely resulted in the previous motherboard dying.

We are rapidly approaching the ‘could have just bought a replacement off ebay’ price point but I ordered a replacement cooler unit and we’ll see if that fixes everything next week!

⟐ Edited by author August 25, 2020 at 9:02 MST

⟐ Answer deleted December 12, 2019 at 21:47 MST

I got this used because from family since it would not turn on.

I ordered a replacement motherboard to get it back up and running.

After putting everything back together for the first time, it turned on to the splash screen. For a few seconds it was loading then artifacts showed up on the entire screen. I understood probably that I hadn’t plugged in the screen properly into the motherboard. The power button did nothing after pressing it, then holding it after so I unplugged the battery (which I honestly think is what caused this issue im having now aka shorted the board again).

I took it all apart and put it back together again.

This time, the computer wont turn on. I re did everything 3+ times more just to make sure, but nothing. I saw on another forum that the “MB ribbon” may be improperly plugged so I fitted

everything perfectly.

Now when I plug it in (with and without the battery attached), it turns on for a second with the amber charging light blinking (if battery attached and no light if no battery is attached).

The power status light blinks once every few seconds for a second or two. The keyboard lights up and the CPU fan turns on then promptly turns off again afterwards completely dead until it’s next power cycle in a few seconds.

Ive read somewhere else that the charging brick may be faulty and I should find a new one.

Ive tried power cycling, reconnecting components, plugging in battery and turning on/plugging out battery with charger connected and turning on.

I’m completely lost and im super frustrated at this point after coming so close to fixing the issue.

I can upload a video if that helps at all.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

⟐ Answer accepted September 30, 2020 at 20:09 MST

⟐ Answered November 14, 2016 at 8:31 MST

⟐ Answer edited January 11, 2021 at 0:44 MST

I have taken it to a couple of PC stores telling them what I have done and if they could check the motherboard power connection - the part that the power cord fits into. Both times, for a charge of $50 each time, they have told me that they tested the power cord, it’s fine (DUHHHH, I bought a new one and tested it!!!) and that it was probably my MOBO. NEITHER of them gave me any information about the power connector part GRHHH :=} When I plug the power adapter in it does appear a bit loose but I’m pretty sure that’s par for the course on this type of adapter?

I was wondering/hoping that someone here MAY have tried replacing this part to see if it was the culprit OR is there an article here on how to check my mobo?

Thanks for any assistance you can give me

⟐ Answer edited February 16, 2026 at 16:13 MST

⟐ Answer edited October 06, 2017 at 5:18 MST

⟐ Answer edited March 10, 2017 at 5:55 MST

Stage-1: Suddenly stopped booting up - only power (white light) light blinking when tried to turn on. Tried the usual things - OKR etc - did not work.

Stage-2: I dismantled all parts (Battery, mother board, SSD, Fan/Heat sink, all ports, detached display et al. - except further dismantling the display), reset all the connections and assembled it again. This did not help either. On powering up, only orange light blinked a few times and turned off. No white light, neither the fan turned on.

Stage-3: I replaced DC-IN cable with a new one as the old one looked a bit old and weary. Now on pwering up, orange light also stopped blinking and no white light or fan. Same result if I again used the old DC-IN - no orange, no white lights, no fan. (BTW, in the process, I ended up breaking tiny little clip that locks the ribbon cable coming from fan-assembly and connecting to the PCB having Power and USB ports. But, I managed to connect the ribbon cable back temporarily - I hope this is not the main problem!).

Now I have no clue what the *#$% problem is! I do not even know if my battery is OK or motherboard is the culprit or totally something else.

Is there a way I can check if power flow is alright, battery is working fine and so-on - so that I can isolate the problem and order only the faulty replacement part?

Did anyone had this problem before? Any suggestions or help? Am very desperate as my little daughter’s online classes are getting affected due to this issue!

From looking around, finding replacement screens for this device are more costly than the computer itself.

It was a donation to our nonprofit for us to sell to fund our programs.

Starting to think I’ve managed to sh*t the bed on this one.

⟐ Edited May 03, 2020 at 1:03 MST