bad smell from X220 fan exhaust

Wife complains about bad smell coming from X220 fan exhaust, I just want to check if anyone else have similar experience with it.

If I return it to Lenovo, and they decide to repair it, will they send the new one with an empty hard drive?

 

Is it a burning smell? Was there ever any liquid spilled on it?

They can and I have seen Lenovo reimage/replace drives even if it wasn't checked in for that issue. Always backup your files before you mail anything out. You can also ship without the drive, but Lenovo does not recommend it.

 

It's not burning or spilled. I am not really bothered by it, but she said it smelled like some kind of chemical.

 

I think the smell you are referring to is pretty standard across the Thinkpad line. Both of my thinkpads have had a sort of funny smell come out of the exhaust vent.

 

Can you smell it?

If it's not a foul/offensive or a burning smell and this aside the unit is functioning normally, then I wouldn't worry about it. If I stick my nose right next to my W530 exhaust (can't believe I just did that ), it does have a computer/electronics type smell to it but nothing that I would describe as abnormal for any laptop.

We humans all have noses with different sensitivities, so it's hard to say if the smell she is talking about is normal or not but if it was my laptop and the odour was not what I mentioned earlier, I would consider being without my laptop for a few weeks more inconvenient, especially if other can't smell it. Maybe your wife has a very sensitive nose.

 

There have been a couple of threads over the past six months where new owners complained of a toxic smell. I believe they had the machine exchanged.

Regarding the question, "If I return it to Lenovo, and they decide to repair it, will they send the new one with an empty hard drive?", whatever you do don't send a hard drive with personal data on it.

If you have a spare HDD, it would be best to restore the factory image to a drive that is identical to the one that shipped with the machine and thus no personal data.

I believe the repair policy is that they assume the drive you send does not contain any personal data you want back. Even if that isn't the official policy, you should assume it is.

 

It's probably the standard electronics smell that many new laptops/desktops come with. It'll dissipate with time. Perhaps you could have a fan continuously blowing at the laptop and it might make the smell go away faster.