CONSTANT OVERHEATING ON Thinkpad T60p...

Hey all,

I love my T60p but Vista keeps crashing because it's so unbelievably hot. On XP, it's the same thing, but just not as often. Does anyone have this or a similar problem? What can I do?

 

You might need to take this to a shop and have the fan and vents cleaned or replace the battery.

Have you tried to see what happens when you run it without the battery? Does it get as hot?

 

Hey, thanks for your reply. Actually, I have two 9-cell batteries, one of which is brand new. I'll run it without the battery, but I don't think it's that. Why do you think the battery might be the culprit? Thanks again!

 

Well, batteries heat up when they charge, and when they start to degrade, they always stay hot, warm at least.

so this heat gets added to the mix of regular heat from the rest of the system, and it proves to be more than can be dispersed so it just keeps getting warmer and warmer.

it may not necessarily mean the battery needs to be replaced, it just means it may be adding too much to the mix.

does this laptop have a fan?

 

Oh yea, it has multiple fans. I have an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T60p, and like I said, I think I've read somewhere that it is a known issue with the T60/T60p series. IBM has a utility that "maintains and trains" the battery, so when it is fully charged, it stops charging it, so as I write this, I just touched the battery and it is totally cold.

I think the ATI FireGL video card may be a large contributing factor, as the left third of my Thinkpad always gets red hot when run at full performance. That's where the video card resides. Also, it will almost always overheat when put on a mattress, for example, as it also has vents on the bottom of the laptop.

Also, it is definitely more prone to overheat on Vista vs. XP. Well, a high-end ATI FireGL V5200 video card with 256MB's of video RAM can take advantage of all the gfx features of Vista Ultimate. Do you think it's attributable to running Vista Ultimate in "full-feature" mode? It would be a logical conclusion to me.

Thanks for your help! If you have any other ideas, please let me know.

 

Well, I didn't really think for sure it might be the battery, but I wanted to see if it lasted any longer before it shut down with the battery out. If it's cold, then I think that is the same thing.

I used to work for a warranty maintenance company, and a VERY common issue with laptops was clogged fans and vents. Likely because of all the different places they go.

While I am sure Vista places a higher demand on both the processor, and the video card, I would not think it should be hot enough that a user could describe it as "red hot" (I'm sure it's not actually glowing red, but I know what you mean, It's super duper hot).

If you're relating that it would do the same thing with XP, but would take longer to happen, that tells me that heat is building up and can not be dispersed.

Other than running at less than full performance, you're not going to find any software settings that can reduce this heat build up. AND, if the issue really the fans and or fan ducts, eventually, even running at reduced performance will not keep it from overheating.

Unless you're VERY experienced inside laptops I would seriously consider taking it to a service center and have it checked out.

Be SURE to explain to the technician that it was doing the same thing with XP or they may just dismiss it as a "software issue ".
In fact, you may want to consider restoring it to original XP before you take it in.

Good luck, and keep me posted!

 

Thanks very much for your excellent answer. And yes, I mean very noticeably hot vs. the literal meaning. hehe...

At any rate, I didn't mean it was Vista's *fault*, but rather, like you said, I attributed it to Vista, especially the Ultimate version, which I have, to take advantage of my pretty new (it has the Vista-capable sticker) laptop capabilities. And I always set it to balanced, and then Maximum Battery Life when it gets "red hot ", and it looks like, that does help. At the same time, it defeats the purpose of having the Ultimate version, or such a high-end laptop, wouldn't you agree? Except when watching a movie, that's when I set it to low as low power, which in my case means it will display the movie the same way as when I have it set to Maximum Performance.

I recently opened up my laptop to install another GB of RAM for a total of 2GB's, so yes, I actually work in IT, although it was quite embarrassing to have disabled the Snipping Tool, as part of several other Windows servies, and then wondering why it had disappeared. LOL...I had thought it had to do with a patch from Microsoft, when it was genius CrunchDude who, only because of the heating issues, disabled Windows Services, one of which ended up being the Snipping Tool. Right Arie??? LOL...

I'll check again "under the hood" to see if there has been assembling any significant amount of dust, but the vents looked alright. One more quick observation. I am used to my Thinkpad T43p's fan being loud and it never overheated. Now I have two fans on my T60p, and the fan is quiet as a mouse and not nearly as forceful, and it seemingly doesn't not clear the heat out well enough.

Lastly, and please excuse the length of my post, I was recently in Las Vegas, including the hot days (115 (45C) every day for a 1 1/2 months of my lovely stay in that town) with virtually no air-conditioning. I was only there to help my ex with her leg and three operations. Anyway, after getting out of this hellhole, I am now back home in much cooler Los Angeles, so the room temperature being over 90 (32C) at all times must have contributed to the problem.

Thanks again! You know your stuff!!!

 

Hey Arie,

Thanks for the find!!! I didn't even know this type of stuff existed. I wonder how many people use these. I've been using nothing but my beloved Thinkpads since 99. I have yet to be disappointed and there was never a heat issue like there is with my T60p (see my previous post).

For example, now, I've been working on it for about 2 hours straight, have it set to Maximum performance, and everything is fine. You might say, everything is cool. lol...My room temp is about 77 (25C).

 

I don't mean to beat this issue to death, but a friend of mine recently got a new laptop. A Compaq Presario. She has Vista Basic rolleyes: ) on it and she brought it over last night. She said she ALSO, for the first time considering all of her previous computers, is experiencing the heat issue. Her parents bought it for her and it is a low-end machine. Perfect for her purposes, though. Plus it's widescreen, which I had never seen.

So my initial contention that maybe it was due to having a Core Duo T2500 CPU @ 2GHz is invalid. I felt her laptop when she said it was getting hot, and sure enough, hers was not AS hot as mine sometimes gets, but it sure was close.

Any more suggestions? Is there a third-party app that will always tell me what temp it is, and/or one that at least puts the system into stand-by or hybernation mode, so that I can stop worrying about losing work to this highly annoying heat problem?

Alternatively, or in addition to(?), is there anything in the Vista settings I can tweak to make the fans run stronger and "earlier ", before it gets to where it may overheat?

Thanks again for any replies.

 

People will say otherwise, but laptops are not really gaming machines, at least not yet. They are getting closer and closer...BUT...the latest processors are being installed and running those processors hard will cause heat.

Something I would try. Make two user accounts. One for "work" and the other for gaming. In the "work" one, you can have Aero enabled, nice themes, etc, etc. In the gaming one, disable Aero, in fact, set it for "best performance ". Have little or no "extras ". Make it bare-bones. If you do not do online gaming, disable all the background programs.

See if you can turn down the visual effects without losing much of the atmosphere (things like shadows, smoothing, etc). I disable sound in games, but that is up to you.

When you are running games, you cannot run much else, so why not make User Account devoted to it?

Only a theory.

Matt

 

Strange but good news. I now constantly run it at Maximum Performance, and the fan runs better now. This happened after I installed the latest updates from Microsoft.

 

After updates on both Vista and XP?

Matt