Overheating A21p

[fcampbel]

I just thought I should share this experience with others. The fan on my A21p stopped working and it would not run long before shutting down. Since it did this several years ago and was under warranty, I thought I was in big trouble now that the warranty is over. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fix this. That is how I found this forum.

The fan would run for a few seconds during bootup, then it would stop and not run again. Out of desperation, I duct-taped an external fan to a vacuum cleaner hose and taped that to the exhaust port of the Thinkpad.

Then I took the thing apart and cleaned everything I could find, ordered arctic silver, a new fan assembly and considered ordering a new motherboard. when I removed the fan assemby, it was surrounded by a big glob of white stuff that I assume was thermal gel. I cleaned that off and wanted to put it back together.

Because I could not wait for the arctic silver, I went to Radio Shack and got a tube of thermal paste and reassembled the computer.

I got on the internet and found a really great program called Hmonitor that lets me monitor the temperature of the CPU and automatically throttles it down to keep it cool.

Then, I remembered that, last week, while fiddling around with the settings, I went into Thinkpad Configuration and ran the Configuration Profile Wizard. In the Wizard, I shut off all the ports and things that I never use. I unchecked the Serial Port, the Parallel Port, the Infrared port, and the internal modem. I decided to enable them all again.

After I did that, the fan started working again. Now, as far as I can tell, it comes on like it used to. But, I think the Hmonitor program is doing more than the fan to keep my thinkpad cool. It seems to be much cooler than it has ever been.

Like I said, I'm new to this forum but, since I have found that there is a great deal posted all over the net about overheating laptops, I thought I'd share my experience. Especially since I sent the computer in once for overheating.

[daeojkim]

Welcome to the forum.

Glad that you solved your problem.

[hausman]

It's important to make sure the fan exhaust at the back of the notebook isn't blocked. I once inadvertently covered up the exhaust grille on my A21p. The machine soon "died" (powered itself off.) I became distraught when I touched the bottom of the case and almost burned my hand. Fortunately, after allowing it to cool, it came back to life.

[fcampbel]

Here's an update in case anyone is interested.

My monitor continued to shut off without warning. It was very hot on the screen bevel covering the "inverter".

When it happened in bright sunlight, I discovered that I could still see faint images on the screen. What I thought was the screen turning off turned out to be the backlight. Apparently the inverter was overheating.

This past weekend, I tore the thing apart and discovered the elaborate heat-sink running from behind the screen to the fan. I finally used the arctic ice heat-sink compound between the CPU and fan. Then I put some between each of the metal-metal connections running from the fan, through the screen hinges to the inverter in the lower part of the lid.

It may be too soon to say but, it has not shut down since. And the bevel over the inverter does not get as hot it seems to me.

By the way, does anyone know where I can get a stick on thermometer to put on the bevel?

[a31pguy]

Very interesting post ! Thanks for the information. Sorry I don't have a source for you on a stick-on.