Hi. I have an IBM Thinkpad R40 laptop with WinXP. Recently, I found out that the laptop gets really hot because the CPU fan is not working (this is the only fan in the system). First I thought this might be due to BIOS, so I updated the latest BIOS and Embedded controller driver. While doing this, when the BIOS was flashed and the image got loaded, the CPU fan worked like a charm. It stayed on at its full speed until the image was loaded and the system restarted. However, once I restarted the machine after the BIOS update, the CPU fan comes on for like a second in the very beginning (POST)and then dies off and never comes on again even though the laptop gets really hot.
Since the CPU fan works when I update the BIOS, I don't think it's the fan that's causing the problem. What would be the cause then? Does anybody know the answer? My laptop is burning hot and I've got to fix this stink'in fan before it gets fried. Please save my little toy.
Any advice or tips will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Brandon

could be a variety of things. You could have a thermal break. When the system gets hot initially, the connection opens and the fan loses contact to complete a circuit. Or, you could have it turned off in BIOS, or the fan is just faulty. I'd start with BIOS. After that, you just have to get it fixed.

There is nothing wrong with BIOS and it doesn't have fan control options. Like I said, I do not think it's a hardware problem since the fan works while I'm flashing the BIOS and updating it.

ok. do this then.

pop out a bootable cd and boot to it. if your fan still works then i would agree some software setting, possibly a motherboard monitor of some sort, or power setting may be causing an issue.

otherwise it sounds like an intermitting hardware problem,

then it could be a thermal break or another software issue. Do you have any kind of temperature monitoring programs running?

My BIOS doesn't have the temp monitor. I'll try getting a new fan and heatsink and see if it solves the problem.

Hi Brandonslee,

Did you fix that problem? I just met the same problem as you did, I have a thinkpad A31 running XP, it used to be good, but a week ago the fan stop running when start up XP, but the fan is good, it runs before start XP.
Do you have any suggestion?
Thanks