X61 second fan bust. Bypass bios warning with <Esc>

[martinj]

Was working on my tax return when due to the second fan that cools the mini-PCI cards under the palm rest got bust. It was Sunday and I needed to finish, so I tried to get it to boot again. Struggeled for a long time. Took out the fan - no go. Tried to connect the orange speed wire to the speed wire of the main fan - no go. Finally got the laptop booted by blowing on the 2nd fan with a straw and after some attempts getting the rotational speed in the range of what bios wants. This was with the top cover and keyboard off. Then idled the laptop and carefully put cover and keyboard back.

Now today after some more googling I found I could have juts bypassed the bios warning by pressing Esc. (Wish I had found that on Sat or Sun).

I didn't find a way to permanently disable the 2nd fan warning in bios.

As a note: It has probably run without the second fan actually rotating for several months. (My office mate complimented that my laptop turned quieter some time ago...) I usually run Linux and just idle the laptop. Bios only checks the fan on reboot. I needed to reboot in windows to run run turbotax.

My X61 doesn't have the WWAN card so I'm not sure why there's a second fan in there to start with. It is the second time that 2nd fan breaks. First time was within warranty. First the service guy replaced main fan. Didn't work of course. Then he said can't fix it. I pointed to the second fan and he replaced that, then worked for a few more years until now. I'm not planning on putting another 2nd fan in there, so I guess I have to get used to time my <Esc> press on bootup for the remaining life of the X61.

Martin
X61 (favorite thin and light) X230t (Faster, but don't like screen format) , T42p (best overall notebook format ever) + many Dell