W530 Trouble

[thealphaoverseer]

Hi Everyone!
This is my first post here, so please don't judge me. I'm also a novice with computers, but my friend inspired me to become interested. I have an old W530 with ok specs - 8GB RAM, K1000, i7 3rd gen. So, here was my problem:
- Screen glitched when I touched my laptop (horizontal bars, buzzing sound if audio is enabled)
- Could only use external keyboard and mouse
- Screen glitched when too hot
My friend suggested my motherboard was too old and solder was loose, so I tore apart my laptop but my motherboard looked fine. So I put it back together (although not so eloquently, the wires inside are all messy and I still have 4 screws without places to go) and voila! It started working perfectly fine again. Or is it really? Does anyone have an explanation for what happened? Thanks!

[kfzhu1229]

Your NVidia GPU is on its way out and with the old crusty thermal paste it already starts showing you the early signs. Replacing that thermal paste will make the board live longer.
Your keyboard might be spill damaged and/or have blown fuses on the motherboard. The power button is on a separate trace on the keyboard and it might not be liquid damaged there.
I really had no idea how easy these keyboards are to liquid damage before. The spill resistant gasket doesn't protect the area between the Thinkvantage button and the power button, where underneath there is the brown ribbon cable pinched onto the membrane by a pressure metal bracket and some foam. If the liquid goes inbetween the membrane from that area, the keyboard is game over. I have such a keyboard on my T520 and tried to replace it twice and both of the replacement keyboards have the exact same problem. Now I am just gonna tear that thing apart, clean the traces and redraw the traces affected by the liquid with a conductive pen that I purchased.

[axur-delmeria]

Now I am just gonna tear that thing apart, clean the traces and redraw the traces affected by the liquid with a conductive pen that I purchased.

Let me know if you succeed with that trace redrawing idea.

[thealphaoverseer]

Hi,
I am very confused. What's thermal paste? The grey powder smudged over the CPU and GPU? I haven't spilt anything on it.

[thealphaoverseer]

Also, if the fuses were blown, I don't think I would have fixed it by disassembling it and reassembling it.
Originally, it didn't have this screen glitch problem, but then it developed this problem when the screen was closed (and 'close lid' set to 'do nothing') and then worsened. Note that when it glitches, it must restart to recover. I'm just concerned if this problem will reappear, because I'm planning to sell it.

[axur-delmeria]

Hi,
I am very confused. What's thermal paste? The grey powder smudged over the CPU and GPU? I haven't spilt anything on it.

Grey powder? If you're describing it like that, then it means that it's already dried out.

Thermal paste is applied in order to fill in microscopic gaps between the processor/GPU and the heatsink. You should clean the processor, GPU, and heatsink, then apply new paste.

[MikalE]

Your first stop should have been the hardware maintenance manual. It is available here under the .PDF link below the site header.

At least you'd know where those four screws are supposed to be.

[cadillacmike68]

Go ahead and get the HMM as noted by Mikal. Use it as a reference while you do the following:

Get some quality thermal paste, like arctic silver 5, etc.
Disassemble to get at the heatsink / fan, remove it.
Clean the fan and CPU & GPU areas where they meet
Apply the new thermal paste, not too much
Re-attach the fan / heatsink
Re-assemble the system noting where all the screws are.

The problem Will re-appear, the question is how long. As was noted, the GPU is starting to go bad. Re-doing the thermal paste will help it not get too hot.

[thealphaoverseer]

Wow! Thanks for the info! Maybe relying on a dodgy Youtube video wasn't a good idea...
In the manual, it shows 3 ports for the wireless card. Mine only has two so the white cord is not connected to anything.
Hopefully, I might be able to borrow my friend's thermal paste after the holidays and put the screws back. I also noticed the black tape was not sticky anymore so my wires are all over the place. Can I use sticky tape instead? There was also this foil tape thing near my fan - same thing happened. What does it do? My GPU averages 55 degrees when running a stress test like FurMark - is that too hot?

[cadillacmike68]

GPU temp 55 isn't that hot.

You can get a small tube of thermal paste for a few dollars.

Connect the main and secondary antenna wires to the Wifi card.

Tape, you can try scotch tape, or a hi temp tape. Do not use duct tape or even electrical tape because they get gummed up when too hot, especially duct tape.

[MikalE]

Don't discard that foil tape. It is used for thermal protection and in some cases electrical shielding. Put it back where it was when you are finished. Use a double sided Scotch Tape if you have to.

[kfzhu1229]

Wow! Thanks for the info! Maybe relying on a dodgy Youtube video wasn't a good idea...
In the manual, it shows 3 ports for the wireless card. Mine only has two so the white cord is not connected to anything.
Hopefully, I might be able to borrow my friend's thermal paste after the holidays and put the screws back. I also noticed the black tape was not sticky anymore so my wires are all over the place. Can I use sticky tape instead? There was also this foil tape thing near my fan - same thing happened. What does it do? My GPU averages 55 degrees when running a stress test like FurMark - is that too hot?

You can replace the black tape with any tape you have lying around.
The foil tape you wanna replace it with another piece of foil tape or stick it back in with double sided tape. That foil tape is important to make sure all of the wind from the fan gets through the aluminium fins so you can have maximal cooling. Replace it after you do the repaste though as you might also need to disassemble the fan itself to clean off any dust and dust bunnies that might be stuck within the heatsink.

[kfzhu1229]

Let me know if you succeed with that trace redrawing idea.

Just did that today. Spent an entire night and I managed to get one out of the three broken T520 keyboards working. To be fair I initially used liquid metal to connect the traces and as a proof of concept that I know where all the problems are. Now there are still keys that don't work such as the power LED (I broke when I was separating the layers and destroyed the LED when attempted to glue it back) and the scroll and right trackpoint buttons, but this can now be used as a normal keyboard for the most part.
I started by prying the cover on the special keys off, and then undo the welding on the back that holds the plastics frame that goes inbetween the function keys and holds that cover in place and take it off.
Then I undo the screws on the back of the keyboard that pinches the ribbon cable to the membrane. Undo the brackets and also carefully pull out the ribbon cable.
Then sure enough by that pinching area liquid got in and corroded some traces. Removing the corrosion with contact cleaner left me with two disconnected traces near there.
Then I removed the F5-F8 keys as well as their switches so I can separate the membrane layers far enough.
Then I am JUST able to fit the pen inside and draw the corroded off traces on top. Try the pen on some paper to make sure it has ink right before I try to draw.
And that did the trick! Pinch the cable with the membrane again, tighten the bracket with screws. Use superglue at the welding spots to join that plastic frame together. Put all of the special keys back and the cover back and it's done!
Also, the 7th pin from the left on the bottom side of the membrane is the positive terminal for the power button (3.3V, the other terminal is just ground). This might be useful if you have a broken power button (which I found on all of the 3 broken keyboards as carrying 3.3V means the trace corrodes worse)
Here's a picture of what I did
https://1drv.ms/u/s!At7-rt1KJ7WviPlTo5C ... g?e=Bm7oAQ
This is the pen that I ordered (For some reason this one on Newegg is much cheaper than on anywhere else)
https://www.newegg.ca/circuit-scribe-cs ... 6886445010

[axur-delmeria]

So in your keyboard's case, it's the traces near the pinched connector that broke? I wonder if that's true in a more general sense. I gotta look into my broken keyboards then.

[kfzhu1229]

So in your keyboard's case, it's the traces near the pinched connector that broke? I wonder if that's true in a more general sense. I gotta look into my broken keyboards then.

Yeah. And I would suggest you open that connector up and see for yourself if you have the same problems since you have nothing to lose anyway.
Its usually the bottom side that's having the damages because of the gravity of the liquid...
One tip for removing the white switches is to start by using a small tool to bend the plastic leg of either blue circle in this photo outwards and over the metal bracket, then wiggle to get the other side out, and then wiggle to remove the keycap.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!At7-rt1KJ7WviPlUMysSHGQhFeodpQ

If you have a broken power key, check if the 7th pin from the left on the bottom side of the membrane has any continuity with the bottom pad of the power button, if not and you cannot find where the break is, first check the pin and the pad of the button whether either of them are shorted to anything else, then you can also draw a trace with this pen like this:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!At7-rt1KJ7WviPlV3LkNbchNTWfcMw
You might have to sacrifice the power led for this since with this drawn there is no room for the led to sit, but you rather have a working power button than led right?

[kfzhu1229]

Let me know if you succeed with that trace redrawing idea.

I want to update on this now that I think I found the proper way to tackle this problem.
Recently I have gotten a lot of 6 of laptops and surprise surprise 3 of them came with broken keyboards. And now I can't believe I have the capability to fix all of them!
One has a broken Windows key, so whatever.
One has a broken escape key, annoying but not the end of the world.
One has two columns of keys not working, now that's surely something I have to fix.
None of them are ThinkPads but I think once you get the keyboard open, the way to fix is about the same.
The opening process for the keyboard varies vastly one model to another, and sometimes even the same model with different switches.
For cases where the fault is happening along the edges of the keyboard (the Windows key and the escape key for example are all on the corners on those keyboards) is usually much easier and you only need to clear the switches and keycaps along that surrounding area.
As for the case of the 3rd one, where 4, 5, r, t, f, g are not working, I have to remove every single keycap but that doesn't require me to remove the switches as the switches come off with the top layer shield on those (but they are slotted in place so touching the keycaps send them flying all over the place)
On the two with each one key not working (they are the same keyboard), they were the easiest to repair. The membrane layers on them comes right apart as soon as you remove the keycap and switch.
Then I just need to follow the traces with my eyes to see where they go, and fortunately they all go to a nearby key, so I just take the pen and draw the traces connecting both pads. I have to draw to the pad itself as the traces are all covered in this substance that scratching it off also takes the silver paste with it.
Put the keyboard back together enough to test. Once all keys work, open it back up and apply a clear coat protecting the traces you draw. The conductive pen I have is meant for kids to get creative, the traces are meant to be easily scratched off if you make a mistake.
So a clear coat is required so the ink doesn't get smudged within the layers and at best ruin your repair, at worst short to other keys that now you have key shorts.
The third one is more involved. It's from a spill resistant keybaord that went beyond just membranes. It used a metal shield on top of the membrane to protect from liquid spills and such. This one is also broken in the centre area and not the keys by the edges.
I have to take off every single key cap (they are dirty and needs washing anyway)
Then there are those metal poles that I have to unsnap the shield from. I have to undo the left half of them to get the traces under 4, 5, r, t, f, g visible.
What's more complicated with this one is that the switches are also mounted onto this small bracket that are individually mounted onto the metal shield and falls off by the touch of your finger. So they keep falling off when I am working on the membrane.
It's also even more interesting that this is a single layer membrane, where each pad is separated with left and right side and your dome makes direct conntact with the pads to connect them.
There is also a pointing stick on this one, so the traces near the pointing stick go all squiggly.
The trace that comes from those keys actually go from the f key around on top of the g, h, j key and then goes around the pointing stick to the b key, and then to the bottom where the keyboard cable goes.
I am extremely fortunate that there is a b key still connected in that trace, otherwise I have to wire directly to the keyboard connector and it gets really messy!
I am not going to be squiggly with this ink as there is 1Ohm of resistance roughly every centimetre of distance.
Fortunately dell covered all of the traces on this one with the black layer that's this time forgiving in the traces when I try to scratch off.
So I scratched off near the g and b keys, go the shorter way around the pointing stick and draw on top of other traces and it works!
Need to apply clear coat on this too and then use hair dryer to accelerate its curing time.
Then putting back together this keyboard is tedious. I have to superglue half of the metal poles because I have to bend the shield to get it off and of course then those poles don't hold up well anymore.
I have to also slide the brackets that hold the switches underneath the shield while supergluing a small batch of those poles at a time to secure more of these brackets down and then proceed slowly.
But well after a long struggle with this keyboard (I almost gave up seeing how difficult it is just to open it), it works great and now it's also cleaner than ever because of course I used that opportunity to throw all the keycaps under soap water and then brush on the shield.
Even though I had no such luck with a ThinkPad T520 keyboard last time that I tried on 3 of them, maybe you can find this useful nontheless.
For testing, I typed this entire message up on one of the repaired keyboards and no problems so far.
Well I cannot believe how much experience I have gained by getting these machines to work.
I am also glad that the clear coat applicator on my car paint repair pen works great with the circuit scribe conductive ink that's relatively cheap for the special thing it is.
Without the clear coat the ink can easily get smudged (it's designed for kids to draw on paper and even then it can also be easily scratched to break so errors can be quickly fixed) and at worst short out other traces and leave you worse off than before!
Pics will come soon.
Try this ONLY if you have nothing to lose, like the case where two columns of keys don't work so the keyboard is essentially useless.

[axur-delmeria]

Excellent work!

Can you provide links to the conductive pen and clear coat you used?

I can practice with some netbooks stacked on the shelf.

[kfzhu1229]

Excellent work!

Can you provide links to the conductive pen and clear coat you used?

I can practice with some netbooks stacked on the shelf.

This is the pen that I used. For some reason it used to be some 40 bucks now it's like 10:
https://www.newegg.ca/circuit-scribe-cs ... -_-Product
As for clear coat, I believe lacquer clear coat does the job better, but well I had the car paint scratch fix pen so I use the clear coat on that.
sometimes drawing on such smooth plastics the pen may not grip well to release ink, in that case I just take the cartridge out and blow it from the back to push more ink out
Here is a gallery of 3 keyboards that I have fixed so you can see how I draw the traces and put clear coat on top:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!At7-rt1KJ7WviP4pI5J ... w?e=MOXTxj
The idea is that you take apart the area where the key does not register, find its closest connected neighbour key that works and see if there is a break in the trace with a multimeter.
Always double check with higher resistance modes before you declare it disconnected, sometimes the traces can go all over the membrane and have about 100Ohms of resistance but works fine nontheless.

[atagunov]

I want to update on this now..

Hi there! Sounds like you have a number of dead keyboards. I just wanted to chime in saying that the plug on ribbon cables of broken keyboards might be a somewhat valuable item. It seems totally impossible to purchase them new.

When would you need them? You'd need them with any 51nb-style machine! Especially those that offer USB-C to connect monitor and keyboard/mouse. E.g. those that can be "docked" at home by connecting USB-C "docking station" and power.

Those boards don't have an external on/off switch which makes it impossible to switch the machine without opening it. The most practical way then is to build an interposter board which on one side would have a socket for the keyboard connector (these you can still purchase if you really want to) and the keyboard-style plug on the other hand. These are not sold new. At all.

With such an interposter board it should be possible to break out the power button leads and place a new button somewhere where it can be pressed without opening the machine. Actually this kind of fix could help you with those keyboards where the power button no longer works too. Suppose you use a hot glue gun to stick a new button in a supposedly disused bay for those cards.. what is it called? or somewhere else where you can reach it.

[kfzhu1229]

Hi there! Sounds like you have a number of dead keyboards. I just wanted to chime in saying that the plug on ribbon cables of broken keyboards might be a somewhat valuable item. It seems totally impossible to purchase them new.

Well I suppose I now have 2 sets of spare T520 keycaps and one T520 spare ribbon if that helps or if anyone here wants them.
Oh yeah sorry I don't think i made it clear, those are all dell keyboards. I got a lot of 6 of wrecked Dell laptops for the sake of having fun repairing them.
While the replacements for the keyboards are just as easy to find as the ThinkPad ones, I think I have better utility if I can fix them instead of buying replacements.
Since one of the keyboard was badly broken anyway, why not gutting it and try to fix it I thought?
Well when I tore that apart I seriously did not think I can get it working because the trace is broken right in the centre near the pointing stick, very hard to get to.
But with enough patience and persistence I was able to fix that right up and now the keyboard is not only fully functional, but also squeaky clean because the keycaps went through laundry detergent.
And with all this in mind, I thought it could also be useful to demonstrate how you can repair broken traces on many pre-chicklet era keyboards by tearing the membranes open and draw traces to fix.
While I had no success with the T520 keyboards, someone else might and save him/herself 40 bucks, which is far less than how much one of those cost in Canada.

[kfzhu1229]

This might be a wrong place to give an update for that keyboard fix thing but at last I am successfully able to fix a T420/T520/W520/X220 classic keyboard!
Yesterday I saw a listing on Facebook marketplace that someone is giving out two free ThinkPad X220 keyboards both for parts, so I picked them up and see if I can revive and use one on my disabled T520.
One has the trackpoint ripped out and also the red stem is totally broken, and another looks perfectly intact but seems to be of the eBay "refurbished" bs! More on that later.
Since both of them are suspected to be broken, I start with the former one that's obviously broken hoping it's easy to fix.
Broken trackpoint module isn't hard to fix, two screws hidden beneath g and h keys and the module comes out with the keyboard ribbon cable, which needs the control button cover to come off and then two more screws on the back.
Well, then my next problem is that the trackpoint buttons are binded, that pressing either the left button or the middle button registers both. Turns out the lazier way to fix that is simply put a piece of tape on the middle button trace at the pinched area that connects the keyboard membrane to the ribbon cable, which is the upper membrane, 2nd pin from the left and the middle button will never work again.
I ended up ripping open the keycaps, switches and the membrane beneath the Esc, `, Tab, Caps Lock, L Shift and Fn keys, as well as ripping open the plastic rivets under the trackpoint buttons to inspect and there's coffee damage around Esc key all the way to F4 key! This also needs opening up the plastic frame around that area.
I give a quick dab of contact cleaner on that area and the binding issue went away but the middle button doesn't work.
I found two areas of break that got disconnected by the coffee damage and then me cleaning up the coffee. Patched them with my conductive pen then sealed it with clear coat and now the middle button works again!
But now the F1 and F2 keys also don't work and ` key takes a hard press to register. F2 key fixed itself after I assembled the keyboard back and honestly I don't care about the F1 and ` key, and from now on I will use F12 and then use the boot menu to enter setup. If you see the picture, that area is heavily damaged beyond repair that repairing them will cause more other traces to break.
This is because liquid damage on keyboard membrane can dissolve the conductive paste and then create shorts or breaks, and if you just blindly clean every area with this sort of visible damage, the silver paste that got dissolved will come off too and you can do more harm by disconnecting more traces that didn't have problems before! And this is especially true on this specific keyboard that in my experience have rather weak silver paste to begin with.
As for the other keyboard, this is something people should be aware of. It seems like that's a "refurbished" keyboard on eBay, but in reality it's someone taking a well worn keyboard and then apply a coat of matte clear spray paint all over the keyboard! I can tell that by the weird rough patterns on the keycaps as well as the fact that I can easily scratch it off using my nails!
Plus, this lazy job means some paint got underneath the membrane and make the connections very flaky! This keyboard is like many keys work sometimes and doesn't work at other times!
I think the original owner had a ThinkPad X220, spilled coffee on the original keyboard (the former keyboard I got), tried getting a replacement on eBay that's a piece of crap (the latter one I got), and then only managed to nail it on the 3rd keyboard he got later! Of course he's frustrated and then give them to me for free.
https://imgur.com/a/vSAQvdG

[my03]

Hi kfzhu1229,

kudos to you for being able to fix those keyboards up. It is quite impressive work

Unfortunately, some of your links are now gone so i was not able to browse them. I'm having a similar dilemma with my TP760E keyboard where keys (on the diagonal) are now working at all (9, 0, o, p, l, ö (would be a '[' on a US keyboard), etc). I already checked the keyboard PCB on this machine, looking for any trace of battery acid, etc and found none (its clean as new) so i was thinking i maybe have the same issue as you had. But i need to ask you, when you disassembled the keyboard itself, how did you pop out the plastic rivets that (most probably) holds the whole thing in place? Did you use a soldering iron and melted them? Did you later heat-glue the whole thing back?

In the last link (that was still in place) i saw that you removed a few key-caps, was that because you could not separate the flex-pcb underneath them otherwise?

(yes, mustering the courage to do the same thing here )