Keeping laptop powered on all the time?

[hippieki11er]

I've got a ThinkPad T30 and it's been a true workhorse. I usually have it powered on for a solid 12-14 hours per day and shut it down only at night. Over the last 6 months however, I've been randomly getting a "Fan error" message upon start-up, at which point, the laptop automatically shuts itself down. Usually when I try restarting it again, it'll boot-up fine without the error message.

Problem is, I've been getting the fan error message more frequently now and consecutively upon retries to boot, to the point that I can't successfully start my laptop until the 50th to 100th time I try. Would it be bad if I just kept it powered on and never shut it down? I only get the error message upon start-up, so could I prevent the fan error simply by not shutting it down and letting it go into sleep mode at night?

I've been looking to replace this with a T61 or Vaio, but in the meantime, desperately need it to function so I can at least use the internet for email and to shop for another laptop.

 

[TTinCO]

You probably just need a new fan-it shuts down to prevent it from frying itself.

 

[hippieki11er]

It only shuts itself down on start-up when it says "fan error". It's never once shut itself down once successfully powered up, if I'm on the internet, or working on a Word document or something. That's why I'm wondering if just keeping it powered on all the time could be a good work-around until I find something new?

I love this T30, but it's pretty much a dinosaur at this point and would it really be worth it to replace the fan? Parts and labor, how much for a new one?

It's a 2.0GHz P4, a good chip, but I've got a wireless card sticking out of the side and only a CD-ROM for a main drive. Oh, and the 512MB of RAM that I bought separately about two years ago and stuck into the second RAM slot must've died too because on my system specs it says I only have 256MB of RAM, which must be just the original 256MB of RAM that came with it. Time to move on, right?

 

[TTinCO]

lol.....yeah, pretty much time to move on

 

[hippieki11er]

Can memory slots go bad? I just opened the bottom of the laptop where the two memory slots are and swapped the positions of the two memory cards and now my system is showing 512MB of RAM. Before it was only showing 256. The original 256MB card that came with the laptop is now in the second slot, which I'm assuming the computer isn't reading. At one time the computer showed 768MB of total RAM, which was obviously the total of the two memory cards, but now it's only reading the amount of memory that is sitting in the first slot.

 

[juice]

have you tried cleaning the fan out with compressed air?
It's amazing how much crap gets gunked up in there. Try it before you commit to getting a new fan or laptop