My IBM Thinkpad T42 has been working fine with no problems. Suddenly upon startup, I could hear the fan come on, saw the same lights lit on up the LED, but had a black screen that just sat there. I turned it off, rebooted it after a few minutes and it booted up fine to the point in XP where you choose the user. I clicked on my name, and it was locked up. I could not ctrl-alt-del, I had no cursor, could not do anything. I rebooted again after a few minutes, and it beeped 4 times, paused beeped 4 times, paused etc and would not boot up. I turned it off, unplugged it, waited a few minutes and turned it on again. It booted up, and I was able to work briefly on a Word document, then just when I closed out Word, the machine locked up again. No cursor at all and I could not do anything. The ONLY thing I have done differently was recently purchase a USB mouse, which I have used only 2-3 times, and it worked fine until this issue today. I have read that these machines have some USB issues. Any ideas? I let it rest a while, and tried a few more times, and when it is able to boot up, it gets just so far in the process, and the cursor either disappears or locks up totally where I am unable to do anything. It is running Windows XP home addition.
