Thinkpad T41 fan always on

Hello,

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the cooling fan on my T41 stays on a
lot of the time. I've had this laptop for over a year, and I've never
experienced this problem. Folklore has it that this overactive fan
problem can be triggered when changes are made to the Window's power
management settings (I'm running Windows XP). What can be done to fix
this problem? I've tried restoring the power management options to the
default laptop/notebook settings.

Thanks

- Olumide

BTW, I'm considering upgrading the BIOS, embedded (thermos?)
controller etc, to the latest versions but before doing so, I would
like to check if the versions I have are the latest. How can I do
this? (I'm quite wary about installing basic software and messing up
the laptop, and I'd like to avoid doing so if I can.)

Thanks.

"Olumide" <> wrote in message
news:9d73be03-1d12-4fb2-acfc-...
> BTW, I'm considering upgrading the BIOS, embedded (thermos?)
> controller etc, to the latest versions but before doing so, I would
> like to check if the versions I have are the latest. How can I do
> this? (I'm quite wary about installing basic software and messing up
> the laptop, and I'd like to avoid doing so if I can.)
>
> Thanks.


Checking the date of the update will tell you.
If the laptop is 1 yr old and the newest ver is 4 months old and you never
updated the Bios then it would be able to update.

Read the txt notes. If the listed changes don't affect you then I would not
update just for the sake of updating.

> Checking the date of the update will tell you.

How do I check the date of the last update?

> If the laptop is 1 yr old and the newest ver is 4 months old and you never
> updated the Bios then it would be able to update.
>
> Read the txt notes. If the listed changes don't affect you then I would not
> update just for the sake of updating.

Where can I find the text notes, and the updates?

Thanks.

"Olumide" <> wrote in message
news:0e0fd89b-cb60-4dc9-b238-...
>> Checking the date of the update will tell you.
>
> How do I check the date of the last update?
>
>> If the laptop is 1 yr old and the newest ver is 4 months old and you
>> never
>> updated the Bios then it would be able to update.
>>
>> Read the txt notes. If the listed changes don't affect you then I would
>> not
>> update just for the sake of updating.
>
> Where can I find the text notes, and the updates?
>
> Thanks.


On the Lenovo website. The txt file is below the file, which tells you what
changes were made to it.

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:51:01 -0700 (PDT), Olumide <>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> A few weeks ago, I noticed that the cooling fan on my T41 stays on a
> lot of the time. I've had this laptop for over a year, and I've never
> experienced this problem. Folklore has it that this overactive fan
> problem can be triggered when changes are made to the Window's power
> management settings (I'm running Windows XP). What can be done to fix
> this problem? I've tried restoring the power management options to the
> default laptop/notebook settings.
>
> Thanks
>
> - Olumide

Sometimes the CPU isn't the culprit - the GPUs of the Thinkpads tend
to get somewhat hot too...
I'd recommend taking a look at TPfancontrol by troubadix (
http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html ) or the similar
TPfancontrol on sourceforge (
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tp4xfancontrol/ ) - both are parallel
developments based on a freeware a couple of years ago...

The idea is to be able to control the fan of your Thinkpad according
to your personal configuration - as a byproduct it shows the
temperature readings of most of the TP sensors, so you might get an
idea what exactly is responsible for your fan continuously running...

good luck

T.C.