What makes it even more bitter is that it was still fast enough for web surfing and playing media...It definitely had enough horsepower to avoid being obsolete for years.
After some research and testing, I've determined that the mother board is dead. It's disappointing since Thinkpads are supposed to be known for their reliability.
The only upside is that I learned how to remove parts of the laptop (hard drive, optical disk drive, RAM)...So maybe I'll have some parts to salvage, but it still sucks...Very disappointing, Lenovo.
