e520 thermal sensing error

[flamenco]

Hi Fellow Thinkpadders!
Update on my last post below... apparently the fan running continuously was a prelude to hardware problems. I'm now getting "Thermal Sensing Error", and the laptop shuts down. I've seen other posts where someone gets this after upgrading the CPU and such. I didn't do any of that.

Does anybody have insight on this, please? Thanks so much, Dave

---- original post is below --------

I have an e520 Edge, it's about 1.5 years old. It has been working very well.

I have a question about the cooling fan. It's not making a bad noise or pulsating or anything like that. But it seems to be running faster now, even when the unit feels very cool. The only time I remember really noticing the fan before were on very hot summer days, where I expected the fan to be running a lot.

I haven't installed any significant software recently, although my Firefox did do a couple plugin updates yesterday, Firebug and a couple other things.

I guess one question would be: do these fans run continuously (and I just didn't notice it before), or do they normally go off when the machine feels very cool to the touch and not much is running (and it's winter here)?

I thought that fans ran at different speeds based on settings and temperature, is this true?

Do you have any advice on what I may do about this, or is it normal? Any advice very much appreciated!

Thanks, Dave