T520 fan has stopped spinning

7 months ago by solrize to c/thinkpad

Not sure what has happened, whether it's physically broken or something went wrong with the software. So the machine overheats fairly quickly now. This is running Debian 11 (bullseye) and /proc/acpi/ibm/fan says:

status:		enabled
speed:		0
level:		auto

so I don't know if the heat is being recognized. The CPU does clock down as it gets hotter. I'm not getting any type of overtemperature alerts though, and I haven't found any place in the acpi tree to read the temperature. That's annoying since there must be some sensors in there.

It looks like there is a program called "thinkfan" in trixie so I might try to upgrade the machine tomorrow. I can only do so much at a time before the box gets too hot.

Any help? Thanks.

Cobrachicken 3 points 7 months ago

Does the fan turn on when booting? Does your BIOS have any fan entries? Just check if the hardware's broken and replace it.

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solrize 5 points 7 months ago

I will try rebooting it but I don't think the fan turned on. I have the impression replacing the fan on these machines is a huge pain, plus I'd have to get the replacement fan someplace, so the box would be out of action for a while if I have to do that. I do have another old thinkpad that I can migrate to if needed.

Right now I'm doing an apt upgrade so can't reboot til that finishes. Thanks!

Update: I power cycled the box and the fan did turn on during boot, and in fact it's still running. This is strange but at least for the moment, I guess the problem has solved itself. I noticed during shutdown, the screen filled with @ signs, which I've seen a few times before. I think this ancient box may have flaky hardware by now. Someday I'll get something newer. Thanks for the help.

Added: oh yes I also found a bunch of thermal sensor files in the /sys tree. I haven't looked into how to interpret them and I guess I'm ok for now.

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monnier 3 points 7 months ago

I'm not familiar with this specific machine, but I've dealt with similar fan problems in 3 other machines (twice successfully (both Thinkpads) and once not (not a Thinkpad)) and I'd recommend you open up your machine and clean it, including opening up the fan itself, which is often not as hard as it sounds and saves you the trouble of having to find a replacement.

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phanto 1 point 7 months ago

I own cats. Blowing out the fans is never enough... Tweezers!

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monnier 2 points 7 months ago

Just to be clear, I really meant to disassemble the fan until you hold in your hand the plastic thing that rotates (at which point you can really clean it, and take the opportunity to add a drop of lubricant on the axle).

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hexagonwin 2 points 7 months ago

maybe there's too much dust that the fan can't spin? i have a w520 and the fan on it is very loud, very hard to not notice if it ever spins.

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solrize 2 points 7 months ago

It's sort of weird, ACPI said the fan was enabled and not spinning. I would have expected different if it was trying to spin. After the power cycle it sounded about normal. But I'll try to clean it, at least with compressed air. Thanks.

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hexagonwin 1 point 7 months ago

btw i recommend against compressed air, laptop fans are fragile and especially on this 15yo machine. it's very possible to break the fan blades. imo a soft brush is better.

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solrize 1 point 7 months ago

Hmm interesting, thanks, yikes. I will avoid the compressed air then, or stay with very low velocity like a blower brush. But, I had hoped to avoid disassembling the machine. Wow. I powered it off last night and turned it on a little while ago and the fan is running gently.

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hexagonwin 2 points 7 months ago

the t/w520 isn't that bad to disassemble, it's all very easy after you manage to detach the plastic palmrest held with clips. if it runs well now that's great :)

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monovergent 1 point 7 months ago

Wild guess, but have you used me_cleaner at any point? This happened to my T510 when I tried neutering the Intel ME, sometimes the fan works, sometimes it wouldn't, and no apparent errors came up.

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solrize 2 points 7 months ago

No I've never used me_cleaner. Maybe I should. It's possible that the fan got stuck and disabled itself but later the obstruction cleared. I did notice some noise from it, and it's spinning quietly now.

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