Why the hell would the fan rely on software to tell it to spin up? That function should be in the firmware. The logic board should be able to handle cooling without any software running on the machine.

*> Because a person might want to tune the performance of their laptop in regard to power consumption.

That's what exposing BIOS settings are for.

You have described why there might be an interface for fan control that software could use. It does not justify not having the board opt for sane defaults.

i'm calling bullshit.

if you don't put special software on your linux before you boot a live cd, your thinkpad t500 fries itself.

sure it does.

I never said it would fry itself. It actually just turns itself off, and I have to remove the battery and power cord to get it to restart. And I only had this problem on Windows 7. Every major Linux distro I tried had proper power management support.

thanks for the clarification. you should have sent it back! it's probably out of warranty now. if you can switch off the ati graphics and use the intel graphics, that's a workaround.

Of course it doesn't fry itself. Any CPU made in the last 20 years will throttle itself and run at lower speeds instead.

If that was the case with the T500, that's exceptional. My T520 and T530 have no problem spinning up their CPU fans in all sorts of configurations missing Lenovo's utilities.

I have a Yoga Y 510 p. Windows barked at me after a few weeks of installing Windows 8.1 from scratch. It said I should get the latest version of the power utility from Lenovo. The power utility lets me spin up the fan which apparently can help get rid of dust. It also lets me select battery health mode as opposed to battery performance mode. When in battery health mode, the power supply does not charge the battery beyond about 60% and will not start charging before the power gets drained to about below 40%.

As far as I know, the power utility is the only thing I installed from Lenovo. The graphics drivers from nVidia came directly through Windows Update.

Should I be concerned? Should I uninstall the power management tools?

Windows told you to install a power utility from Lenovo?

How would such a message come about? Do Lenovo pay Microsoft to put in error messages? Did it look for the answer to your problem online?

I haven't used Windows much recently, but wouldn't it just be delivered as a driver through Windows Update?

which driver would tell you to install a power utility? how would that happen? what driver, could possibly get installed by windows update that would tell you to do that?

Driver updates have been a part of windows update since 7.

Windows Update has offered driver updates since Windows 98.

that will install bare bones drivers and services, but not startup daemons, control panel software or anything that could give you a message telling you you need to install a power utility.

I can attest that the little white flag in my notification tray linked me to lenovo support website telling me to get the power management utility.

so riddle me this, under what circumstances does the cpu fan not spin?

i'm having a hard time imagining a computer booting, without a cpu fan. OS: I'm starting up - so do all these things! as fast as possible!

It can be a combination of factors:

- The CPU fan might be controlled via ACPI.

- The operating system is supposed to run ACPI code provided by the BIOS.

- A BIOS can specify different sets of ACPI code for different operating systems, so Linux might get different code from Windows.

- The ACPI code provided by the BIOS for Linux might be broken, or lacking fan control.

- The hardware vendor may have decided not to provide APCI controls for anything, relying instead on proprietary interfaces.

Section 1.9 of https://www.kernel.org/doc/ols/2005/ols2005v1-pages-59-76.pd... looks like it might be related.

I think you have it backwards: The CPU fan spins. Until the OS (or the AML bytecode that the OS interprets as a part of ACPI) tells it "the CPU is cool right now, you can slow down and save power".

> On a Thinkpad T500, you do need Lenovos special power management tools. Otherwise, the cpu fan will never spin up and your processor will overheat.

I am replying to this guy. Never spin up? Overheat? He's completely wrong.

I know full well how it works, I don't have it backwards.

I'm pretty sure you're trolling, but I'll feed you. I wasn't fully clear. Really what I meant is that the fan always spins at a slow speed. When the processor heats up, the fan doesn't speed up, and eventually the cpu shuts down to protect itself. And I've spent 12 hours a day in front of this computer for the past 5 years. I know how it works.