How to Turn on the Fan on a ThinkPad 310

Your ThinkPad 310 needs to use a cooling fan to prevent the CPU (central processing unit) from overheating and becoming damaged. As the default setting, the fan uses Smart Fan Control to turn the fan on when the CPU reaches a certain temperature. However, if this is malfunctioning or not responsive (if the thermometer has become unreliable, for example), you can turn this function off and set the fan speed manually from within the BIOS (basic input/output system) menu.

• 1

  Turn off your ThinkPad 310 and then turn it on again. (This is essential, because you cannot access the BIOS menu while the operating system in loaded.)

• 2

  Press and hold the "F2" key while your ThinkPad is starting up to load the BIOS menu instead of starting up normally.

• 3

  Move around the BIOS menu screens using the arrows to navigate and the "Enter" key to make selections. You can also press the "Esc" key at any point to go back to the previous screen.

• 4

  Navigate to the "Hardware Monitor" section and then find the "Fan Settings."

• 5

  Disable "Smart Fan Control" by selecting it and changing the choice to "disabled" using the arrow keys. This means that your fan runs at a constant speed. As a default, when you change this setting the speed is set to the fan's maximum speed.

• 6

  Use the "Fan Voltage" setting to choose a voltage for your fan use, if you do not want it to use the maximum of 5 volts. This voltage determines the speed of your fan.

• 7

  Save you changes once you are done by pressing the "F10" key. This saves your settings, reloads your computer and turns the fan on.