T61 Fan Failure

I bought a Thinkpad T61 about 2 years ago, and it has run like a champ up until about a two weeks ago. I turned on the machine and I received a "Fan Error" message. I turned it off, tried again, received the same message, and tried once again to no avail. I ordered a replacement cooling/fan assembly, and installed it, referring to the hardware guides from Lenovo. When I started the machine after installing that, The fan didn't spin at all. I received a different error, one which I can't recall at the moment. I shut it off immediately, not wanting to risk any heat damage. Has anyone else seen anything like this. I'm not sure it matters, but my machine has the nVidia discrete Quadro NVS 140. I've heard talk that that chip can contribute some heat.

 

Sorry to break it out to you but the faulty gpu might fail at any moment...Lead org started a thread suggesting that Lenovo will fix some models including the T61 for free. Look into that.

 

Regarding the fan , try disconnecting the BIOS battery for half a minute or/and re-flashing the BIOS. Might bring the fan to life

 

sometimes the fan error can be caused by problems other than the fan..... what model of the T61 do you have?

There is some model that is eligible for post warranty warranty, for like 100 USD per year, maybe you could give that a shot.

 

As long as you installed the new fan assembly correctly, you shouldn't get any heat damage from powering on the system. Check what the error was. It's very possible that you're getting the error because you forgot to plug something back in when you reassembled the laptop.

 

what would this be? I bought a fan connected it and it still doesn't spin up. So I'm looking at other options. I have the t61p 6459.

 

Motherboard circuit failure can also cause this.

 

I heard on the T40 series their was a fuse underneath is this an option for the t61p? Also I'm running bios 2.19, it's very old, could this affect it? I'd upgrade bios (bypass fan error by pressing esc key) but if it gets too hot the pc will auto shutdown and that would be terrible in the middle of a bios update. Thanks for your help, any tips would be appreciated.

 

not sure about the fuse, bios update is not going to fix your issue.

 

Can I ask why you would think this would solve the problem? I've bought a few fans on ebay and I still get the fan error.

 

Hi
I just got the "fan error" on my T61
The machine is roughly 3 years old and has taking quite the beating over the years. It has however, been running TPfancontrol for most of its life so the wear on the fan should have been slightly limited from this. For the past few months the fan periodically (happened 3-5 times I think) started making a horrible grinding sound which would completely disappear upon reboot.
Yesterday I had the TP with me on the plane and upon arrival it was still working normally. Later in the evening the TP took a small bumb (one side of the TP fell 10cm while I was holding on to the opposite side) and this morning, for the first time I saw the "fan error" in the bios.
If I press ESC, the TP starts, but the fan never comes alive. I blew some dust out from the fan and it sounds like fan might be trying to start but I am not sure, since I never stuck my ear down to the fan before, I don't know if this vague "clicking sound" was there before. What should I do? Do I need to take it apart all the way to "base" level to diagnose it? (I know that replacing the fan requires this, but I have been waiting for an excuse for upgrading the PCMCIA to Expresscard which requires quite the general disassembly as well.)
I just wanted to enquire into the general possibilities that I face. Are there any giveaways as to whether this is a fan- or a boardissue?
T61 - 7661-gn3-T7300-Intel GMA-320GB Momentus 7200.4 - 4GB OCZRAM - Middleton Bios Hack