X200 - after cleaning, when turning on, fan spins, stops, don't start again, "fan error"

[Tim82]

After cleaning the fan, a Thinkpad X200 shows these symptomps:

When turned on, the fan starts for a few seconds, then stops. I get a "fan error" message, with hitting Esc key I can past through it, but the fan doesn't start again.

I tried with different fan, same symptoms. These fans work in another machine.

Is this the F4 fuse, which is mentioned here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=100642? Or different problem (maybe with the heatsink)?

Thanks in advance!

[tarvoke]

this will not be helpful, but I have recently had similar behavior on x200t. oddly only with linux but never win7.

I thought it was a physical problem with the fan (or wiring) but after minor surgery, apparently not.

in linux, when the fan stops (low temp, suspend, whatever) it will never start again. no amount of messing with /proc/acpi/ibm/fan will spin it up again. immediate restarts give "fan error" - but waiting a while boots ok.

in windows, low-temp-stop or suspend, the fan will always work again. hrm.

fairly sure it is some sort of pilot-error mystery.

[Hans Gruber]

Take the keyboard off but still connected to the laptop. Unplug the CPU fan and power up the computer for about 5 seconds. If it doesn't power hold the power button down for 5 seconds with the CPU fan unplugged. This is a hard reset of your system. Plug the fan back in with the keyboard pulled but still connected to the motherboard so you can run tests on your CPU fan.

[Tim82]

A follow-up:

actually, the problem was with the fan's wire. It was broken, but not totally broken, and the other fan's wire too...

It seems no-whitelist modded BIOS-es actually bypass this "fan error" warning in the case of X200 and X201.

The X200 had the original BIOS, my X201 (with the other fan) has modded BIOS.

Weird issue, but - with a little help - it was sorted out.