T61p fan never kicks in

[kam_]

Hi,

My thinkpad t61p shuts itself down when i overwork it. I can feel the bottom is really hot, so I assume it has overheated and has shutdown as a precaution.

The only thing is, i never hear the fan at all. Could the fan be dead?

Is there any way to force the fan on, or otherwise test it?

I have just clean installed vista so its not a software issue.

[kam_]

so i installed tpfancontrol, and if i set it to 'smart' mode the fan turns on, and i can hear it.

When i set it back to BIOS mode, it never turns on, even when the temperature increases. A problem with the BIOS maybe?

[richk]

Certainly, you should install latest bios and power manager

[kam_]

Hmm i've already done that. It already had the latest bios.

I think there is some driver missing or something. The CPU reaches 90 degrees while on BIOS control, even when i'm not doing much with the computer. Its probably not being stepped down i guess.

[kam_]

Ok so after alot of experimenting, it seems that the fan is working.

But, if I run at about 50% CPU for 10 to 15 minutes, the in built BIOS settings never take the fan over about 3000 rpm. This leads to the temperature slowly rising to 95-100 dergrees and the laptop shuts itself off.

In normal usage its fine. I guess I could set the power profile to balanced, but I shouldnt have to do that really - it seems insane to me, that the built in settings are wrong.

I've installed TPfancontrol and its doing a much much better job.

[sktn77a]

Is the thinkpad still under warranty? If so, send it in for repair. If not, I guess TPfancontrol is your best option. Strange, though - if TPfancontrol is working, it sounds like all the hardware functions. eg sensors, etc, are OK. Have you tried downgrading the BIOS (maybe you have a corrupt BIOS)?

[kam_]

yeah it still has waranty till october 2010.

I have done a clean install (vista CD, not recivery cd's), and I'm begining to wonder if its missing a driver. Lenovo have discontinued system installer, so I had to install them manually. That was really painfull, because the exe just extracts to \Drivers and you have to figure out how to install the drivers all by yourself. Some have exe's which is fine, but others are just inf files.

TPfancontrol seems to be kicking in alot even when its siting there idle, so i'll go through all the drivers again i guess.

Could someone with a t61p maybe upload a screenshot of their device manager showing system devices, CPU, graphics card and any other sections that you think might be relevant?

EDIT: all the drivers seem fine. And 100% confirmed, reboot, leave it idle for 20 mins and the left half of the laptop is reallllllllllly hot

[kam_]

Could someone with a t61p tell me what driver they have under 'computer' for ACPI?

I think its all windows update's fault and its overiding some of the lenovo drivers

EDIT: There were two drivers there, i switched to the other one, and i also forced the nvidia graphics card to the lenovo driver. The temperature is now dropping really quickly, but windows is only showing one CPU core, even tho under processors in device manager i have two

EDIT2: I redetected HAL and got back to dual core ACPI, but i still have the temperature problem :s

[kam_]

ok so i think its the graphics card. Could someone with the Quadro FX 570M please tell me which driver version they are using?

Thanks in advance!

Idle temperatures:
1 cpu 86 C
2 aps 58 C
3 crd 52 C
4 gpu 82 C
5 no5 52 C
7 bat 46 C
9 bus 53 C
10 pci 64 C
11 pwr 77 C

Cpu core's are at 0 to 10% (tracking offline folders, transfering a few k here and there)
Something's definatly wrong here!

EDIT: updated the chipsety driver to latest intel one.. no change

[wap32]

I really doubt it's a software issue, my 14" T61 recently had a similar problem: idle temps of about 60ºC, under load it would easily reach 100ºC and the CPU would start throttling down. Opened it, cleaned the fan and heatsink and replaced the thermal paste, and now it's much better, even under load it won't go above 75ºC.

You could try opening it, cleaning the heatsink and replacing the thermal paste, but since you're under warranty, there's really no need. You should just send it for repair.

[kam_]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I was just worried that it might be a software issue, and they might moan if i sent it in and there was nothing wrong.

If the same thing happened to you, then that's good enough for me. I'll give them a call to pick it up.

EDIT: Logged a call... they told me to run PC doctor, reinstall power management and update the BIOS. Done all three already, but oh well i'll indugle them

EDIT2: Hmm its about to melt even in DOS running PC doctor

[richk]

It sounds like a bad MB sensor.

[sktn77a]

It sounds like a bad MB sensor.

That's what I thought at first but if TPfancontrol works fine, the sensor sounds like its working (?)

[richk]

I'm not sure what temp bios and tpfancontrol are set to come on. It's possible bios is set hotter. Then it could be bad sensor.