Thinkpads Forum

My nephew left his Lenovo laptop off and unplugged from the wall (the battery was left in the machine) for 3 months while he was away in the military and now is about to return to school. He plugged it into the wall, turned it on yesterday and received a message that indicated that VISTA needed to be activated. He shut it down and restarted it but now it won't run for any more than a few minutes before shutting down on its own.

He removed the battery and tried it from the wall but the same thing happens. Does it need to be reset or some other such action after the extended rest?

The machine is 2 years old - 3000 N100 – Pentium Dual Core 1.6GHz – 1GB Ram – Vista Home Premium

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

There are probably many things that could do that, and I will share the small one that I know. If the fan stops or has trouble working, which may or may not be noticeable to your ear, the heat sensor will cause the computer to shut down and save it from overheating. It has happened to me and it usually occurs in the first 5 minutes or so after booting. The fix is to remove the fan, clean off the lube, and apply a thin coat of lithium grease and assemble.

Again, this may not be your trouble and is unrelated to the error note you saw.

And by fan, i mean the fan blade and it's integral rotor stem. Just remove the access panel and then the fan's chrome cover. Now just grab the fan blade and pull. It is held in by magnetism. Lithium grease is used on auto brakes and it only takes a very tiny amount.

Hopefully that is your issue as it is an easy fix. If that isn't it I would try to read the Event Viewer to see if any error is listed.

Thanks Lenny

I cleaned the fan bay and then removed the blade and lubricated the stem, charged the battery and it seems to be running fine. Is there a way to set the default mode for the fan to always on (as you can on a desktop... there is nothing to indicate so in the BIOS)?

There was nothing suspicious in the event viewer and I have since reinstalled Vista as it was in need.

I am just wondering if the fact that the battery was dead flat would have prevented it from starting.

Any thoughts?

Lenny2 wrote:There are probably many things that could do that, and I will share the small one that I know. If the fan stops or has trouble working, which may or may not be noticeable to your ear, the heat sensor will cause the computer to shut down and save it from overheating. It has happened to me and it usually occurs in the first 5 minutes or so after booting. The fix is to remove the fan, clean off the lube, and apply a thin coat of lithium grease and assemble.

Again, this may not be your trouble and is unrelated to the error note you saw.

And by fan, i mean the fan blade and it's integral rotor stem. Just remove the access panel and then the fan's chrome cover. Now just grab the fan blade and pull. It is held in by magnetism. Lithium grease is used on auto brakes and it only takes a very tiny amount.

Hopefully that is your issue as it is an easy fix. If that isn't it I would try to read the Event Viewer to see if any error is listed.

The reason for the failure, in my case, was that the original grease had dried up. It was too dry for the little fan to turn well.

In your case, I would not modify the fan, as it turned off the computer and saved it as it was designed to do. The fan operates at different speeds adjusting for cooling and adjusting to not waste the battery. I am not sure if it ever stops, you can wet the side of your finger and put it next to the out-port and tell if it is blowing.

I don't know why Lenovo shipped these computers with grease that is adversely affected by the standard operating temp of the cpu; oversite? But as with other products, this type of thing happens all the time. Actually I have read of at least two other 3000 computers having this heat problem on other forums.

I am glad that my info was helpful and got you running again.

I have the same problem with Lenevo 3000 N100. Tried with/without the battery. Same problem. Opened the case, cleaned the fan and the heat sink. There was a too much of carpet dust inside. Still I have the problem.

I wanted to try applying grease option. Where can I buy this kind of grease. One more thing I am worried about is while opening the fan, I might screw up. Is it easy to open the chromium cover and pull the fan. Please suggest some idea.

maavericc wrote:I have the same problem with Lenevo 3000 N100. Tried with/without the battery. Same problem. Opened the case, cleaned the fan and the heat sink. There was a too much of carpet dust inside. Still I have the problem.

I wanted to try applying grease option. Where can I buy this kind of grease. One more thing I am worried about is while opening the fan, I might screw up. Is it easy to open the chromium cover and pull the fan. Please suggest some idea.

The cover comes off with 3 tiny screws (maybe 4) and you can just pull the fan blades off. They are held in place by magnets.

I used a silicone spray lubricant I bought at an electronics shop as opposed to the grease and it is working fine. The grease can be purchased anywhere that sells automotive products (Canadian Tire here in Canada).

Lenny2 is correct in that the machine will shut down if there is any heat buildup from a fan that isn't working properly. It doesn't take much either.

To remove the chrome cover to my fan, all I needed was a small screwdriver like those used to repair watches. Don't loose those tiny screws, just go slow and be calm. It really isn't a tough operation to complete. Use a stable work-area and good lighting. Be sure to twist-up a piece of paper napkin and clean the old grease out of the hole that the fan stem goes into.

The grease I used to solve my issue is called Lithium Grease and is used in high temperature application, like brakes on a car. It only takes a super small amount to coat your fan stem, like a thin film. Temporarily you can use vasoline, but it only lasts about a week or so, as it can't handle the heat either.

Whatever grease you wind up using needs to be light and temperature resistant. A traditional petroleum grease, like that used for gears and bearings, is probably not going to work as they are too thick and not heat resistant enough. A water based lube will dry up very quickly. Any lube with large particles, like teflon, graphite, aluminum, and copper, I would stay away from for this application.

The things I wrote about these other greases are generalities, I am sure there are some available that can do the job. I am suggesting something that is readily available to the average Joe, maybe from the local Wally Mart. Good Luck.......

If you can start your computer do this:

Touch your "Window" key - search for "event viewer" - Click to open Event Viewer

Now expand the tree on the upper left under "Window Logs". Look in these logs for "warnings" and "errors". They may report the exact cause of a problem, which you should try to fix. sOtherwise it might report something sorta cryptic that you should use google to determine what it means. Keep your eye on the dates as an error 9 months old probably won't be your issue.

I did mentioned this in my first reply to the OP in this thread, but I didn't detail it till now.

Of course you could try the pre-installed Rescue and Recovery program to check your system components. Also if you have recently made a registry/system change or loaded/un-loaded some software, a system restore might be the fix? And finally if you can boot into "safe mode" and the computer runs for several hours or so, then the hardware is probably ok.

YOU SHOULD BACKUP EVERYTHING FIRST REGARDLESS OF WHAT PATH YOU TAKE

If it started in safemode and ran without problems for several hours then, as Lenny suggested, it is not likely hardware however and unfortunately, given the nature of their use, laptops do die. As you have tried to diagnose issues with respect to the heat and not had any success it is time to move on to other possibilities.

If after reinstalling you still have problems I suggest that you start looking at other components within the machine and eliminate them one by one. Hopefully you will find the culprit and it will be a simple fix. I once had a machine whose modem was damaged through an encounter with a power surge from the telephone line. Once I isolated it and replaced that part the machine worked fine.

Start with this site http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2 ... e-problem/ and work your way through the possibilities.

As I said before, if it runs without problem in safemode then the easiest thing might be to back all of your data and do a factory reinstall of Windows. You should be able to access the recovery partition by pressing F11 at startup.

I am not sure we are all on the same page. If your computer is automatically rebooting, then, this is a different problem than the OP and I had occur. If your computer is automatically rebooting and attempting to start, then, I would say that there is no heat issues. The computer senses the cpu over heating and it shuts down, dead; you can't restart it until ten minutes or so as it cools down.

The heat issue can be put to rest by removing the access panel and using a hair dryer on fan-only or using a hosed vacuum cleaner. One should be able to keep it cool and running. Make sure you cleaned the copper grill next to the fan.
http://zedomax.com/blog/2009/06/02/lapt ... -cpu-fans/
In this article is a photo of a different computer so its for example only. The copper fins show a tiny amount of web-like dust and that needs to be removed; just in case you didn't know. Also run it on a flat hard surface, not on pillows or carpet as it has to breath.

This site might help you more with the event viewer as there should be some report in there about the issue.
http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vi ... ent_Viewer

Changing out the power supply with your friends was a good idea. Did you try that from the same wall outlet? Can you try a wall outlet on a different fuse, or better yet, a different house? I would tend to think you have a power issue, which could be the wall outlet, the adapter or something on the motherboard. A simple way to check for shorted wires/connectors is to move things, wiggle the power cord. Its easy and cheap.

There might be something in the Task Scheduler or Msconfig that runs and causes a reboot but I don't know what to inform you of what it might be.

Someone had a similar issue and tried creating a new User Account and logging into it, I believe that solved his issue.

I didn't hear if you had tried the rescue and recovery program to check your system components? I could guess that if it doesn't run then you probably didn't do that, but I have to ask. Also, is your "sleep" settings set to the "never" position?

In any case, we or I am stabbing in the dark. Can you clarify the exact issue; it might be a good idea to start a new thread and completely define the issue.