Thinkpads Forum

For 6 months my daughters laptop was used in a kitchen (never hot, well insulated house) but a couple of weeks ago we drove her up to start uni & the halls of res. are actually quite warm all the time. Her m/c (CTO-2007/Win7) started getting so hot that it was turning itself off - something it has never done. The ambient temp is warmer but I'm also thinking that some vibration during the journey could have loosened something inside - a sensor or something else (I'd imagined heat sinks are clamped or screwed down). I sent up a cooling mat and this has helped because the m/c isn't shutting down any more. I visited the other day to have a look at it hoping it would be something obvious like a rogue process running the processor flat out (she's installed Skype - I thought it might be that but it wasn't). With the cooling mat the m/c doesn't feel too hot anywhere. The vent is clear & I can hear the fan on and feel warm air coming out but it's not incredibly hot. I don't know if it's just that the ambient environment is too warm for it (she tends to leave it on all the time but I've set it up to go into one of the power saving modes & to shut itself down if she's not using it for an extended period ~20mins I think). I tried to find an app/util I could use to check to see if the fan was running and at what speed and what was getting hot and causing the shutdown. In the end I installed:-

A trial version of SensorsView Pro 4.1 Build 40709
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Sys ... View.shtml

but it doesn't seem to have been able to pick up the presence of any fan or any data related to it. It did show the processors running at 68-72C which strikes me as hot (this is with the cooling mat). I don't know whether to believe these values or not as the machine feels no hotter than my T21/T23. I also own an identical T60 CTO-2007 but it's waiting for a new hard drive & OS install atm.

I also installed Speedfan from here:-
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

that also doesn't seem to be able to indicate whether the fan is working or working properly either!

So:-
* any idea of how best to conform performance of the fan and it's correct operation?
* Is the temperature (if it is correct) an issue?
* What is the long term prognosis - might the processors soon fail?
* If there is any possibility of me doing any corrective work - I've always found laptops difficult things to pull apart and fix?
* She's at Leeds Uni,Yorkshire, England - is there anywhere nearby or in the city that anyone could recommend a a place to take it?

cheers
Neil

You make it all way too complicated.
Take off keyboard, keyboard bezel, then the fan.
Clean off the old thermal paste (which must have all but dried up/disappeared by now) with isopropyl alcohol from both cooler and CPU, then apply about a rice corn size of fresh Arctic Silver 5 (AS5) thermal paste on the CPU. Spread out evenly, using e.g. an old credit card. Put the cooler back on. Don't forget to reattach its power cable.
Reattach the KB bezel, then the KB.
That's it. A job of about 15-20 minutes at worst.

There's a very good facility in Newcastle (www.reflowrepairs.com), who does repairs on Thinkpads all the time.
Just found out it's about 450KM away, far out, but you could send it in via mail, if you can spare it for a few days.

OTOH, with help of the HMM http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-62733 anyone who can handle a Phillips #1 screwdriver, and does not have two left hands, can do it.
The AS5 is probably available in Maplin's or similar.

Hi RBS

For what its worth, Leeds is about 82 miles from Newcastle.

As my T60 is a 2006 build , am I to assume that the Arctic Silver treatment is something I should ask Nick of Reflowrepairs to do? I live less than 10 miles away.

I am not having any problems with my T60, other than the screen suddenly went black (dark blue?) yesterday while typing something. No fan noise, beeps or anything, just blank screen. Eventually I just switched it off and on again and everything was fine (?).

It has made me wonder if I should buy another T60 or T61 as a spare. I need a laptop for my work and can't afford to be without one for more than a day or so.

T60 or T61? What is your opinion? I am a mortgage broker so the computer tasks are not onerous, just research and word processing. I do like the idea of 8Gb Ram being possible, however.

Lemonstar, sorry to hijack your thread. Hope you get your daughter's laptop sorted.

Walter

@tenpointnine:
My first search showed up a Leeds on the East coast, near Maidstone :
http://www.mapcrow.info/Distance_betwee ... ds_UK.html
Goes to show that my geography is getting rusty...

Nick certainly can do it for you, but following my above instructions, you too could do it yourself.
Thermal paste does not last forever, but a good quality (such as AS5) should do for several years.
Could be your T60 suffers from overheating (when was the last time you cleaned the dust bunnies from its fan?).

If you go the T61 road (with up to 8GB RAM), make sure you get one with Intel graphics, and NOT nVIDIA!!!
There are 3 models T61, 14.1" 4:3 standard screen, 14.1" widescreen and 15.4" widescreen.
The 4:3 with Intel is rather hard to find and comes with XGA or SXGA+ LCD.
The widescreen models with Intel come in WXGA, WXGA+ or WUXGA LCD.
For your profession I would suggest SXGA+ or WXGA+.

Thanks RBS - great answers.
I get cautious about doing things myself when I don't really have the cash to fix things if I mess up the job - plus she can't manage without it and won't be much pleased if I offer her the old T23 to keep her going. Replacing a single cantilevered key on my T23 took more than 20 mins