Fan screwed up on T40 now I can only get into safe mode

[thepoplin]

My fan started to mess up not too long ago and then after about three weeks of it, it went crazy and started to shutdown randomly after overheating I suppose. It would startup normally a few times and now it won't boot into anything but safe mode. It will usually make it as far as the Windows screen and just kicks off. I also tried to reinstall XP as well, but the PC won't boot to cd-rom, so it just kicks off eventually. However if I start the setup from safe mode, it will go about its business and set up but kicks off randomly about 10 minutes in. Now I think I half-way fixed the fan, but I did order a new one. I'm still worried though because it seems like the boot record is corrupt or something. Where do I go from here?

[agarza]

You say the PC turns off randomly, maybe there's a problem with a capacitor on your motherboard and the reason Windows doesn't shutdown on safe mode is because ACPI is disabled running that mode and it don't shutdown the machine. Since you can't disable ACPI under Windows (Normal mode) a overheated or fried capacitor makes a sensor trigger the ACPI to shutdown your laptop.
This is a problem very common in old Vaio laptops (Of course a Thinkpad is not a VAIO) but you should check your mobo too.

[thepoplin]

So maybe if the capacitor is overheating, if I get a new fan that works properly it may not overheat and work properly? I mean I suppose if it's blown, I have to get a new board which sucks because I'm no longer under warranty. Are there any other options?

Oh! Also it has a tendancy to act up worse and won't even kick into safe mode if the power supply is plugged in. It will only come on when it's on battery power but after it's booted, I can plug it back in.

Also in advanced startup options I set it up to not shutdown when XP encounters an error and made it as far as my login screen (which is WAY further than I could get anytime earlier) but I got a license error and was forced to shutdown.