T2X FAN ISSUES

[larryb]

I also had issues with the fan operation on the T21. Since this was my wife's machine she never thought about how hot the fan area was. Not untill the machine started shutting down and not really anting to reboot did she ask me what was wrong.
Well she fried the motherboard and I got a replacement off ebay.
Since I didnt want to trust the computer to cool down the cpu I hot wirered the fan to stay on 100%. For thouse that wish to do this here are the steps:

1. locate the red wire on the fan assembly.
2. Locate a +5vdc source on the motherboard. I found mine on the mouse and USB pcb just back of the fan area.
3. run a wire from the +5vdc source to the red wire on the fan.

I actually soldered the wire directly to the trace on the main pcb.
Now my fan is 100% working.

There is a down side to this, sometimes the POST will indicate a fan error. When this happens I simply power off the computer and then power back on, it will the POST with no error and boot into windows.

Just my $.02 worth.

Larry

[jarrody2k]

You are a legend!

Thanks for the hint. Will give this a try soon and update when/if I have success!

[truk]

I just want to warn people. This doesn't sound like a very safe procedure (especially if you're not good with a soldering iron.) I wouldn't recommend this if it's not required. Most computers run a little hotter than the user expects at times, and I've encountered many people with this problem. Before you do this, you should make sure your fan is cleaned, and that an obstruction or broken fan is not your problem. Usually fans are set to kick up to full at a certain temperature anyway, so this wouldn't help a hot system that the fan works in. You might want to try it if your computer dies from the heat (they shut down at a certain temp.) Sometimes a cooling pad work well. I also would like to note some more downsides:

Possible short to the MB if done incorrectly.
USB puts out 5v 1amp anyway, so you lose some power from it
less battery life
just covers an existing problem

NOTE:I am not trying to say anything bad about larryb or his process (I wish I had known it a month and a half ago a I had a overheating Toshiba that's getting sold on eBay,) I just want people to be careful, as some newer owners don't realize that it's supposed to be hot when it's working hard. I do realize that this can drastically extend the life of a dieing computer. This should be treated as a last resort in my opinion.

[rkawakami]

You are correct to be concerned about this procedure. It's not one that I'd attempt or even recommend either, but this solution to an overheating problem because the fan is not spinning when it should be, is interesting nevertheless. I'm assuming that the fan itself was not the problem as the OP didn't say anything about replacing it. Of course the proper thing to do would be to test the fan to make sure it spins. There is a test in PC Doctor that does precisely that. There is also a thermal sensor test in that program. It's possible that the original problem was a defective sensor, which would not have sent the signal to the fan to start up.

If you know you're not good with a soldering iron you shouldn't even be thinking about doing this type of modification. Not even to mention about how one would go about finding a proper +5VDC trace to tap into (an oscilloscope helps).

[larryb]

I would hope that the person that tries this fix would have some knowledge on soldering. The 5VDC pad was about the size of a pin head. Small soldering tip and using small wire dia is a must.

My issues was that the fan never came on and this is why my wife cooked that PCB and I had to replace it.

I did try a fan that I got off ebay and it did the same thing as the old one.

The fan would run in POST but never turn on after that. SInce I upgraded to a 900Mhz cpu runing full throttle 100%, I decided to hot wire the fan to be on 100% of the time.

Your are correct in causing othere issue with battery run time and so on, But it worked for me and I just passed this info on to others that may have the same issues with heat.