IBM T21 fan problem.

[MSev]

I am hoping someone has some insight on this problem.
What is occuring is that at initial bootup the fan is spinning. As soon as XP starts to load the fan stop. I installed a new fan on the off chance that it was a bad contact but that obviously didnt work. I have also set the power managment to always on with no change. I have also tried it on battery and AC individually with out any change.
I heard the fan power down one day after I had been working on the laptop for a couple of hrs and have since been affraid I would burn out the CPU if I left it on to long. I do have enough time to get into the bios and control panel without frying the CPU.
Also by the time the BIOS loads the fan stops.
There is a patch on the IBM site concerning powermanagement and Win2000 but not XP so I am pretty sure it doesnt apply. Besides how do you install it before things becom terminal :?:

Any help or adice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[zyzplasmaz]

how did you replace the fan? to replace the fan on the T21 requires you to pretty much open most of the chasis.
i know, i open hundreds of T20, T21, T22 and T30s.
the fan should almost always be on. did you install the IBM power management utility?
you can also try a third party fan monitor. i recommend speedfan:
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
i use this at home
was this a recent problem? or has it always been like this? when you place you hand near the fan, do you feel air coming out?

 

[j-z]

I'm having the same problem on my T21. I too replaced the fan and used thermal grease for that extra thermal heat diffusion. However, I'm thinking it's not the fan at all because I see the fan spins on the initial boot but then shuts off and won't restart. I know it's a heat thing because I stuck it in the refridgerator for 20 minutes (coldest fridge setting) and then turned it on and it ran for hours. Outside of the fridge I go to black screen without warning after perhaps 2 minutes.

I installed SpeedFan the other day but it said it didn't support any IBM motherboards and the temperature always read 0 degrees. I haven't found a fan utility that supports IBM.

If anyone knows how to set the fan to always be on, that would be helpful. Msev, you might consider operating out of the fridge. As silly as that sounds it'll buy you enough time to troubleshoot! Be sure to pre-chill.

If anyone has thoughts to what is causing this problem (thermostat?) I'd love to hear them.

 

[digitalpapa]

Are you very knowledgeable about T21s? I wonder if I could pick your brain about a T21 I have.

Recently, after powering down, I can't power up again. When I press the power button to power up, the battery light at the top right above the keyboard and the HDD light briefly go on then off and nothing happens. The only way to get the unit to power up again is for me to remove the battery and disconnect the AC adapter if connected. I let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes. Then I'll replace the battery and reconnect the AC adapter (if there is no battery power left). I press the power button and the unit powers up like nothing ever went wrong.

Thanks,
Leo

 

[j-z]

You might consider downloading this update software from IBM (link below). IBM says it will work on the T21 but I haven't tried it. I ended up buying a new Think Pad but so far regret that decision. I already had to send it back to have the memory replaced.

Your problem might be a bios issue which could be resolved with an update.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=TVSU-UPDATE

As for my original fan problem I suspect the motherboard is shot.

 

[RobM]

A bud of mine asked me to look at his T21. He tried to install XP and it failed in the middle of the install. he was not able to get the thing to complete the install.

When i got it, The fan only ran when in bios or dos and somtime not even then. Some how I was able get XP to complete the install with the use of an external fan. But xp would never get past the start up screen unless I whet in the safe mode. I decide to install windows 2000, it installed without any problems and the fan was running as expected. I checked the loaded drivers and found 4 not loaded. I installed each driver one at a time with the Modem driver being last. Dam modem stoped the fan and the system froze. I went in in the safe mode and disables the modem. now the system works great.

I removed the mini pcmcia card with the modem/nic and installed windows XP with out any problems. I put the mini pcmcia card with the modem/nic, booted into the safe mode and disabled the modem. rebooted and the system works great. I even was able to install office pro 2003 and do all windows and office updates.

So I am posting this here because I can't belive that the stupid modem caused me 3 Weeks of greif and I want the poor fool who has a simular problem to be able to try something out of the ordnary and maybe fix the problem with out spending weeks looking for a solution.

 

[terry tibbs]

Hopefully this is of belated interest; my dad was given a T21 recently, a failed windows 2000 - xp upgrade.

I wiped the hard drive and fresh installed xp, threw up no problems. I upgraded the BIOS to version 1.16, installed the IBM power manager driver that xp doesn't do automatically, thanks to this forum or one similar...

Then I noticed that the fan turns for just a couple of seconds when you 1st switch it on, and then stops. I tried the method above, disabling the tiny Modem card, removing it too, but it didnae do nothing...

It turns out my fan *does* turn but only if I give the thinkpad a real job to do. As a wee test I downloaded some video editing software and let it convert avi to mpeg. After 5-6 minutes I found the fan would then kick in. Browsing the internet, using word/excel doesn't get the fan turning, even after hours.

Hope this helps, it gave me some peace of mind.

T21, 750Mhz processor, 256mb ram, xp service pack 2.