IBM Laptop help

[azmonsoon]

I have an IBM thinkpad T-40 I got from my neighbor. When I power it up I get nothing on the screen. I can hear it running, and there are 2 lights on, one is the battery light and I'm not sure what the other one is, it's a circle with what looks like a "Z" in the middle of it. The only other details I know is it does have windows XP. I've tried removing and replacing the battery. Sometimes it will give a diagnostic type of page that asks you to choose between normal startup etc but the screen is locked up so the up and down arrows do nothing. Also the timer on the screen doesn't count down, it stays on 13 seconds. But like I said I can't always get the screen to come up. Any help would be greatly appreciated...thanks

[Kuch]

You said you hear it running. Just the fan spinning, or can you hear the HDD spin up?
It almost sounds like the HDD is dead.

[azmonsoon]

sounds mostly like the fan spinning

[thefultonhow]

That "circle with a Z in it" is the power light. It's possible that it has a dead hard drive, but I think it's also likely that it's a motherboard problem, which wouldn't be worth fixing.

[Lespaul20]

I used to have a A22m and I has similar symptoms. I narrowed it down to the motherboard or keyboard. I replaced the motherboard and nothing changed I have to assume that it was the keyboard. I didn't spend anymore money trying to fix it and sold it but it sounds like you may have the same problem. I only spent $20 on the replacement motherboard on ebay. If you can narrow down the problem to either you might be able to pick up replacement on ebay for pretty cheap.