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Kernel panic after thermal paste replacement on ThinkPad x60s

shako - almost 2 years ago -

Uhm... Not quite sure if that's the appropriate forum.

Yesterday night I replaced the thermal paste of my Thinkpad x60s (which runs Parabola32 + Libreboot) and everything was fine, I put everything back together and proceeded with a boot test.

When I press the power button, I visualize the Libreboot boot screen correctly. However, as soon as I try booting into anything (I tried both my hard drive and the Parabola OpenRC live ISO) I see some strange errors.

For the HDD, I see the errors in the attached in file "hdd.jpeg".
For the USB stick, I see the errors in "usb.jpeg".

It's like it either can't detect the BIOS battery (which I removed during the thermal paste replacement process), or it's trying to boot the 64-bit version of the Parabola LiveISO. In both cases, the shell I get dropped in is "frozen" (I cannot enter a single command), and the Libreboot BIOS settings menu does not show anything useful (at least, not that I noticed). I could not find anything helpful online. Sorry for the OT, I very recently installed Parabola on this machine and I really want it back :(

usb.jpeg (212 KB) usb.jpeg Errors when booting the USB stick (Parabola OpenRC live ISO)
hdd.jpeg (270 KB) hdd.jpeg Errors when booting the HDD (Parabola OpenRC)

Replies (2)

Kernel panic after thermal paste replacement on ThinkPad x60s - bill-auger - over 1 year ago -

if the CPU were not being cooled properly, you would not see
libreboot either - normally the computer would shut off

the first image (booting a liveISO?) is complaining about
encryption; but the parabola liveISO should have no concern for
encryption - the second image looks like the bootloader has a bad
command line

can you boot any OS with it? - if not, i would ask libreboot
people about it, or re-flash libreboot if you can, then
re-install parabola if necessary

RE: Kernel panic after thermal paste replacement on ThinkPad x60s - shako - over 1 year ago -

Hi bill-auger, thanks a lot for your reply :)

I seemingly cannot boot any OS with it, hence I cannot flash the ROM internally. I tried flashing it externally, but flashrom won't detect the chip. I thought maybe there was something on the motherboard that was interfering with it preventing me from reading it, so I desoldered it, but that also didn't work. I suspect the chip got damaged, or the files inside it got corrupted for some reason.

However, I recently purchased a bunch of SST25VF016B chips (which is the model used to store the BIOS in x60s, or at least my model). I will try flashing Libreboot on one of those, and then soldering it to the motherboard. Hopefully that will fix everything. I'll let you know! :)

My main concern was that the CPU got damaged for some reason. I'm glad to hear that also you think that's not the case!

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