HELP! FAN ERROR

[jwege]

Hi,

I have the problem that my R52 (which was doing quite well until tonight ... see below) today does boot but the says "FAN ERROR".

The story:

I had a power outage tonight and the TP did not suspend due to a dumb old HP printer driver that does not allow for suspend. Therefor, the TP "died" irregularly.

Now, I cannot switch it on. Until yesterday, it worked quite well with "no" problems. AND I have installed TP fan control (see post here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 51#p614651).

I doubt that the inproper shutdown in conjunction with the fan control any way causes the Fan problem and the fan is not really dead ...

What would be the steps to find out if the Fan now is really dead or it is "just something different"?

Is there any place to find out the pin definition so I could run the fan from a power supply (I am electronics engineer with a little background and tools) to find out it works?

Thanks so much in advance!
jwege

[scr71822]

Check the fan fuse on the motherboard with an ohm meter. The fuse location has been posted here before. Assuming you haven't just burned the fan out.

[jwege]

I am a bit further now.

1.) The fan runs with external power. However, I has some "hangs" which means it does not run evenly but rather speeds up and down a bit, dependng on some vibrations etc.

2.) When, I switch on the R52, tha fan runs a couple of times and stops again. After 3 or 4 times, zhe "fan error is on the screen, however it goes on eith the run-stops and finally switches off the TP completely.

So, I assume that the speed is not high enough and the loopback signals malfunction to the startup routine.

Any ideas how I could trick it? I do not think that it will overheat immediately and I could the further test whats happening.

Thanks again
jwege

[Harryc]

You can use compressed air to speed the fan up at startup, but use caution. You do not want the blades to spin too fast or else you will ruin what's left of the fan motor. What I would do is to remove the fan shroud, then take the blades off of the motor, and use a drop of sewing machine oil (or other light oil) to lubricate the fan shaft, then put everything back together. You will have to take the fan completely out of the machine to do this, so make sure you have some thermal compound beforehand to reapply it to the CPU.

[jwege]

Ugh - I feared such ... That's a surgery. Need to postpone that a bit ... other things have higher prio on the list.

I have, when the fan got noisy, already "pumped" a bit of graphite powder into the fan's compartment since I got the feeling that it somewhere would grind.

Well, seems that the end of the days of that machine has come ... a replacement of the fan makes not so much sense, the TFT shows a fair number of vertical lines also ... used it as a print- and media server the last 2 years which it perfectly fitted into. Need to rethink. As allways: Such events do never fit the schedule!

Thanks 1000 times for your help in any case - really a great site!

jwege