fingerprint reader heat issue

[Philippe Laurichesse]

After about a month into using my X61s, the fingerprint reader has suddenly become hot - though not enough to cause burns it is uncomfortably hot.

Let me clarify that I never use the fingerprint reader and do not have the driver for it installed. (The fingerprint reader was no longer optional when I bought my X61s.)

The heat problem arose right after I restarted the laptop after it crashed following a igxprd32 display driver error. I don't know if there's a link there.

OS is XP Pro service pack 3. Video is Intel 965.

Internet searches brought up only linux users with this problem, on computer programming forums. Not very helpful to me.

There was the possibility that it might be the wireless card - below the fingerprint reader ? - that was causing the heat. I tried turning off the wireless card, but the heat remains.

I went into BIOS and disabled the fingerprint option, for what it's worth. That didn't work either.

I also read that the heat could be due to the USB device not being autosuspend enabled - ie. the fingerprint reader is on all the time - but I'm not sure how I might go about enabling the autosuspend for the fingerprint reader.

Any other suggestions for resolving this frustrating problem would be appreciated.

[Harryc]

You could just remove the keyboard and disconnect the FP sensor.