S580P issues - thermal or configuration?

A few questions to owners of Sony laptops, especially S580P.
Someone technically challenged got one one for Christmas and, while it seems to work quite well, there are things that make me wonder if it is having some issues.

The laptop is running Windows XP Pro it came with. It is a Pentium M 1.7G version.

1) How does your S580P run? What is the program that you use to obtain this information?

SpeedFan reports zone Thermal1 at 49C in the Preserve Battery mode and 52C in performance mode.

Hardware Sensor Monitor calls Thermal1 output CPU temperature. It is unable to obtain Motherboard temperature.

Both SpeedFan and Hardware Sensor Monitor report hard drive speed at 38C.

2) How fast do your fans run? What is the program that you use to obtain this information? Neither Hardware Sensor Monitor nor SpeedFan can obtain/display this information

3) From time to time, for no aparent reason, (no thermal events that I can think of based on the output of hardware sensor monitor/speedfan) when running Windows or Linux, the system would do a single beep that typically indicates a thermal alarm. It does not appear to run any hotter, go into thermal shutdown or do anything else. This alarm typically happens at least once every thirty minutes, no matter if it is plugged in or is running from battery.... However! The system can be left running in BIOS for 3-4 hours without beeps, which seems to exclude it being a thermal alarm.

4) What do you have listed as your "Keyboard" in Windows? XP that sony came with is listing the keyboard to be Standard 101/102 key keyboard. While this may be correct, it seems that some of the Fn keys combinations do not work (volume/brightness/etc). It is not the keyboard/fn keys contact problem since Fn+NumLock combination (ScreenLock) works fine.

I would certainly prefer to not have this system shipped back to Sony for repair if it is a configuration issue....

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

It sounds like you are still using the old BIOS, after updating you should be getting lower temperatures around 46-47 in battery mode.

2.) Try using "Notebook hardware control", I found this program to be very usefull and will give you most of the information you desire.

3.) I have no idea what this could be.. sounds weird

4.) My keyboard is also listed as Standard 101/102 key, Fn + F2-F7 should be working though..

 

So, after tinkering with the notebook for a few days, i did the Windows system restore to the restore point I created after notebook was booted first time. At that point all the Fn keys started functioning correctly.

I do not think that the BIOS is the issue since it identifies itself as the latest BIOS available on Sony's esupport, though i guess i am going to flash it anyway.