X61t suddenly running hot

[j-dawg]

I dunno what happened here. My tablet has always run around 55*C but these days it's just much hotter. I first noticed this watching fullscreen Flash video; as I was in the middle of a clip, the computer suddenly turned off with no warning and no shutdown procedure - it just turned off, terminating my enjoyment of The Daily Show. I picked the computer up and realized it was scaldingly hot. Since then I have been monitoring the temperature and it hangs around 75-80*C even when not doing anything particularly difficult. This happens in both Ubuntu and Vista so it is not a software issue.

Just before posting this, I noticed that the fan slowed down a notch or two. I checked the temperature and it reads 79.0*C. This is clearly not a good temperature for the thing to be running at, and the last thing I'd want the fan to do is slow down.

Anyone experienced this before? I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for extending the warranty the day it was set to expire..

[pgoelz]

Do you by chance have a dog or cat? We had a Gateway M500 laptop that was overheating while the fan was running relatively fast. I shot some compressed air into the air intake and a big slug of cat hair flew out the exhaust. End of problem.

Paul

[j-dawg]

Nope. In fact, I took the thing apart to see if something had come unsettled and the fan is somehow extremely clean. It seems to have no trouble spinning and putting out air, but it just doesn't know when it has to do that.