Tech support The ThinkPad T510 is stuck in a boot loop.
Tech support The ThinkPad T510 is stuck in a boot loop.
I bought this old ThinkPad about six months ago. It was from my boss’s company and was supposed to be thrown away. The battery stopped working, so it only runs when plugged into a laptop charger. A few months back, the machine wouldn’t start up at all, and I didn’t have time to fix it until I moved to a new job. I thought the hard drive failed, but it seems different—it’s stuck in a loop. I tried reinstalling Kubuntu, but it won’t boot from my USB drive. When I enter BIOS, it either restarts or shuts down right away. What might be causing this issue?
You're asking about accessing BIOS or troubleshooting boot issues. It sounds like you're dealing with a potential hardware problem or a boot loop. Consider using a Linux liveCD on a USB stick as a workaround, but if that fails, try removing the drive and increasing memory to test functionality.
It restarts through the BIOS? That's frustrating. Are any storage devices connected? A technician noticed a similar issue linked to an old hard drive—removing and reinserting components one by one. It could be more challenging on a laptop, but it might help.
Well crud. This is how troubleshooting works. You try stuff and it works or it doesn’t, but even the doesn’t are useful because they help you rule out things. There is a famous quote about Edison’s company inventing the light bulb (which took years) something about knowing a thousand things that don’t work. do you have capacity to do a cpuless bios flash on that motherboard? Some do some don’t, and there are several ways it can work. It usually involves a usb key. Right now I suspect the motherboard. There’s a dumb one that may not help but at least it’s real cheap: replace the cmos battery. They’re only a few bucks and it’s generally a really common type you can just pick up almost anywhere. There aren’t a lot of computer parts you can just pick up at the local drug store but that’s one of em. Makes it known good which can be helpful. Edited September 26, 2022 by Bombastinator
My schedule for the coming week. I won’t be able to manage this week.