Hey everybody, My aging Thinkpad A30 has developed a some weird video problems. The video card is an onboard: ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY When the screen is in console mode like when booting or at the bios setup screen there are vertical blue lines and random characters all over the screen. These lines/random characters are not visible in higher resolution modes like x.org or vesa framebuffers. If I enable 2d or 3d acceleration in X windows it will cause the whole operating system to hard freeze. I ran memtest86+ and it showed a bunch of errors. I tried a brand new 256MB stick of memory by itself and it gave the same errors. Anybody have any idea what is wrong with my laptop and/or how to fix it? Thanks in advance, Marshall

Laptops usually have internal fixed RAM and then a slot where more RAM can be added. Try removing the removable RAM and see if the computer can boot. If it can then run memtest again. If memtest shows errors again then the internal RAM is bad. You will need to determine if it is soldered in or removable.

It's possible that you have an overheating problem. Check your temperatures in the bios or with a program like SpeedFan. Laptop cleaning procedure http://www.informationweek.com/stor...

Thank you both for your quick replies. OtheHill: My computer doesn't have any internal memory if I take out the removable RAM it wont boot at all. aegis: I ran the cpu at full speed for a few minutes and the cpu temperature got up to 84°C. Also, the air coming out of the fan felt pretty hot. The fan was set to 'auto' and when I changed the speed to level '7' and ran the cpu at full speed for 10 minutes the hottest the computer would get was 69°C. So you might be right about it being an overheating problem. With the fan at '7' the computer seems stable and the display seems less garbled at boot time. I hope it lasts.