IBM NetVista not booting

[jashber]

I have an IBM NetVista 6578 that I purchased three months ago. Until a few days ago it worked flawlessly. I went on a two-week vacation over Christmas, during which I left the computer unplugged. When I came back and turned it on, there was a delay of about half a minute from the time I hit the power button to the time I started seeing the usual boot-up messages on the screen. Then, it would reboot without warning. I would be doing something, or even when I wasn't using it sometimes, and the screen would suddenly go blank, and it would begin the reboot process. Now when I turn it on it nothing happens -- i.e. nothing appears on the screen, though the hard drive spins and the DVD drive light blinks.

Could this be a power supply problem, or something with the motherboard?

Thanks a lot!

 

[DaveFarquhar]

It sounds more like a power supply issue to me, and that's easier to test anyway.

Dave Farquhar

http://dfarq.homeip.net

 

[kosekjm]

Hi there,

Unfortunately, I'm leaning towards the MB. Where I work, we have been replacing our 6578s (and 6579s) due to popped capacitors on the MB. When the caps pop, we experience problems almost identical to the ones that you are mentioning. In the last year, we have had to replace nearly 15 machines (not to mention the 10 or so MBs that we purchased from IBM) due to this capacitor problem.

What you can do, is open the top of the case and take a look at all of the capacitors on the board. If any of them are bulging or leaking crud out of them, most likely you are in the same boat as us.

There are replacement boards that you can buy from IBM (Your not still under warranty by chance are you?), but I don't know how cost effective that route is versus replacing the machine. My boss had been ordering boards to replace ours, but finally tired of it and ordered new machines. The new boards have different caps in place, so this problem should go away if you do order a replacement board.

I had found a place that is willing to replace all of the caps with new caps. This in effect gets rid of the bad capacitors that IBM (And Dell and others) had been using when these machines were originally built. However, we never looked into this route all that much.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I've been chasing this same problem for some time now.

kosekjm

 

[kestrel1]

Both of the above could be right, but I suspect the CMOS battery.
If you unplugged the machine from the mains power, the CMOS battery would be used to keep the BIOS info (time/date etc)
I have had similar problems with various machines & it is always the CMOS battery.
These are cheap enough & always worth a try.