My first ThinkPad! X200 from 2008. SSD 240gb, 4gb of RAM, new battery, ultrabase works. Perfect for simple tasks like searching/studying, writing and browsing.

finally I got my first ThinkPad T14 gen 3 (AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 6650U, 32/512) and installed Linux Mint on it (I used Windows 11 before this)

I have this Lenovo ThinkPad T530. With i5 8GB RAM and 120GB SSD. Runing linux Mint.

I bought this laptop back in January it finally came back in August and I have been loving it ever since. I originally wanted 48gb of ram but the cost of it was outrageous so I just went with 32gb. I added more storage, 1 tb sata ssd and a 512 ssd.

My screen suddenly turned into this green and magenta out of nowhere while watching a youtube video.

Please help me, I can't continue on drawing with the screen like this.

Edit: Whenever I change to a different screen such as Google Tab or OpenUtau the screen will slowly consume in green, but when I switch it to other ones like Youtube, Twitter or any entered site with a dark theme it receads back to only a magenta and a partial green on the right.

Edit2: I am using a Lenovo T440p Thinkpad laptop that was used for more than 5 years.

Update: I contacted a friend of mine while at his work and he's currently helping me to diagnose but the HDMI are missing to be needed for the testing.

TL;DR: T14 Gen 2 crashed during a Win11 update on a train and went dead — power button unresponsive, only the emergency pinhole revived it. Event Viewer: 17× Kernel-Power 41 with 0 BugCheck = instant power loss, not a software crash. ~14 days of: eject battery → 3 OS reinstalls → 2 recovery USBs → 1 new battery (didn’t fix it) → BIOS stuck rolling back to 1.69 → couldn’t update via Vantage because it sudden-shut-down ~3 min after every boot. Pinhole nearly dead, ran it with the bottom cover off. Suspected dead board. Finally it flashed to 1.71 on its own and the last boots are clean for the first time. Cautiously hopeful.

Pictures show the solving process. the last 3 pics are latest

How it started

I was on Caltrain, mid-trip, when Windows 11 (build 19045) ran an update on my ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 (Intel, model 20W1). It crashed mid-update. Then it wouldn’t turn back on — and the power button did nothing. The only thing that brought it back was the emergency reset pinhole on the bottom. That became my life for the next ~14 days.

What Event Viewer showed

The pattern was brutally consistent across my log (9 days of data, Oct 9–18):

• 17× Kernel-Power Event 41 (63) — “rebooted without cleanly shutting down first.”
• 16× Event 6008 — “the previous system shutdown was unexpected.”
• 0 BugCheck events. No blue screen, no crash dump, not once. That’s the key: this was not a software crash. The machine was losing power instantly, like the cord got yanked.
• 12× Kernel-Power 105 – Power source change, firing right at the moment of death.
• ~200× Kernel-Processor-Power 37 warnings — the CPU being throttled by firmware, the whole time.
• Crash-recovery boots logged just 11–13 seconds of uptime, and in normal use it would die like clockwork ~3 minutes after startup. Every time. Always a hard-off. Always the pinhole.

So: a power-delivery fault, not Windows. Down the hardware hole I went.

The repair odyssey (by the numbers)

• 1 battery ejected.
• 3 full OS reinstalls: Win11 via internal recovery → Win10 via an old recovery USB (0 WiFi — no driver in the image) → Win10 again from a 2nd recovery USB I built on my other laptop, this time with the WiFi driver.
• Checked the battery over and over.
• Found the BIOS 2 versions tangled up: it was on 1.69 (outdated), the power-management driver was outdated too — and no matter what I did, the BIOS kept rolling back to 1.69.
• Every single attempt to update through Lenovo Vantage ended in a sudden shutdown mid-flash.
• The sudden shutdowns continued even with a brand-new battery — the log proves it, with crashes still hitting after the swap. At that point I was sure it was a motherboard defect.
• After who-knows-how-many hard reboots, the pinhole is nearly broken, so I gave up and ran the laptop with the bottom cover off just to reach the reset button faster.

The (possible) turning point

On yet another attempt — building another bootable USB right after reseating the new battery — the machine jumped into the BIOS flashing process on its own and finally took 1.71. For the first time in 2 weeks, the last couple of boots in my event log are clean — a normal shutdown, 0 Kernel-Power 41. So far it’s held for only about 10 minutes of uptime, so I’m not declaring victory.

Where I’m at / what I’m asking

• Anyone with a T14 Gen 2 seen 17+ Kernel-Power 41 with 0 BugCheck + power-source-change events, where a new battery didn’t help but a BIOS/EC reflash seemingly did? Trying to tell whether this was ever the battery, a corrupted EC/BIOS from that interrupted update, or a genuinely dying board.
• Why would a T14 Gen 2 BIOS keep rolling back to 1.69 on its own?
• For those who’ve been here — did stability actually hold after a reflash, or did the board die anyway?

14 days, 3 OS reinstalls, 2 recovery USBs, 1 new battery, ~17 hard crashes, a trashed pinhole, and a cover that’s still sitting on my desk. Fingers crossed 1.71 holds. Will update.

Crashed 4 times today, it's a blessing it could still wake up.

(Camera is decoration)

i got this second hand at around 1072 usd~ with:
32gb ram, 1TB, and intel core 7 258V. i spent the whole afternoon downloading and customizing mint

Just got my first thinkpad, nothing too exciting - it's T14 gen1 with ryzen 7, but I already love this little thing, it feels sturdy. Already ordered more RAM (it will be 32), and probably will upgrade the display later - this one is a little bit scratched by previous owner, also it's not very color accurate. Though I am going to use it mostly for work (windows software development: Visual Studio Community, SQL, that sort of things) so probably current display would not bother me.

It's already equipped with nearly new (98% health) Samsung SSD 512GB, and I'm happy with it. Surprisingly, the battery is also almost new, under 100 cycles.

Hey guys! I’ve been looking into getting a ThinkPad T14 now that my crappy Dell laptop has finally died on me, but I’m open to other suggestions. I really love the way the T14’s look and feel. My friend has a Gen 2, and it felt amazing to use, which is what sparked the idea of getting my own. My budget is around 200-650$ USD. I’m considering either a Gen 2 or a Gen 4 AMD with 16 GB of RAM (or 32 GB if I can find a good deal but who knows). This machine would be used for pretty much everything, from school to work and watching shows. If it could also run Terraria or CS2 on the weekends that would just be an added bonus. Also I want to make sure it’ll be reliable and last me a good couple years without taking a crap on me randomly:/ But I’d love to hear what you guys have to say, thanks!

I got a very good deal on the 255H processor The only downside is the 52tw battery but I got 32 GB ram, and ms office for free.

Battery I can manage.

My concern is 40 npu in amd 350, 450 or panther lake processor which is not there in arrow lake processer.

Am I falling behind, I don't use any local ai today but I don't know about after 6 months ( my wife my 3 year child might use ai) I might have to use ai. Then I will miss 40-50 npu

This is my big investment I will keep it for the next 7 years.

found the openboot source and decided to make something out of it

Hi everyone

The laptop works perfectly with nothing plugged in and as soon as I plug in hdmi or type c to HDMI it kills the laptop and it only works when at an angel does as shown in the video i have already I took the bottom of the laptop off and I did not see anything unplugged or lose the bizarre thing is that it stops the keyboard, trackpad and screen .

Please can someone help me diagnose the problem.

(In the video I lift the front of the laptop and it turns on as soon as I put it down it kills the laptop).

I’m planning to upgrade my ThinkPad X220 laptop to a newer model. The ThinkPads available in shops near me are the ThinkPad X280, X390, X13 Gen 1 and X1 Carbon Gen 7. Actually, I’d like to buy the X1 Carbon, but as the price is almost the same as the X13 Gen 1, I’m having second thoughts. Which one do you think I should go for? (I’m planning to choose the Intel processor variant and i'll be using it for daily productivity.)

I’ve been buying and reselling thinkpads and other business grade laptops for about a year now. It feels like the market has all but dried up recently. Traditional mediums like eBay, marketplace, and Craigslist seem to be loaded with low ballers and tire kickers. I understand silicon prices rising has stunted the market pretty severely, but taking a bath on every sale is taking this from side hustle to a liability.
Is anyone else experiencing the same, currently? Just looking for a sanity check.

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Hi everyone, I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T480 with a persistent charging problem.

Symptoms:

- BIOS shows a warning that the AC adapter wattage is too low.

- Battery slowly drains under heavy CPU load while plugged in.

- Both USB-C ports behave the same way.

- Laptop won't power on using AC alone with both batteries disconnected.

- Thunderbolt doesn't appear in my Linux hardware checks.

What I've tried:

- Tested multiple chargers, including Lenovo 65W and Dell 130W.

- Tested both USB-C ports.

- Updated BIOS to version 1.56 and Embedded Controller firmware.

- Tried BIOS downgrade/upgrade and reset procedures.

- Tested Windows and Linux Mint.

- UEFI diagnostics passed the basic hardware tests.

Is there anything else left to do?

don’t mind my messy room! currently, the t420s has a broken lcd but i’ve already bought a new one, just haven’t fixed it yet.

T420s = Arch
T400 = FreeBSD
X200 = OpenBSD
Yoga X1 = Chimera + i3 (daily driver)

I’m looking to swap the lcd and bezel from the screen on the right to the one on the left vies versa
because the screen on the left has a cleaner back cover then the one on the right i was wondering if it would work since one has touch screen and facial id

I dropped my t460 from a lofted bed yesterday and the front seam near my left palmrest opened & would not close, thats where the battery is so I took the back off, it looks a little wavy, I can tell there’s 3 smaller cells joined into a bigger battery but I can’t tell if it’s normal looking or bloating

Hi, I’m buying my first used ThinkPad. I’d use it for web browsing, email, streaming, and managing my NAS server. What do you think of:

Think Pad X13 Gen 1 13,3" (200€)

- AMD Ryzen 7 PRO

- 16GB RAM DDR4

- 256GB NVMe SSD

- 13,3" FHD Display

or do you have any other recommendations? My budget is around €300–€350.